I’m a big fan of Mark Hurst and his This Is Broken website. But today’s
entry, to me, speaks much more about the ridiculous level of American self-entitlement
than it does about bad design. Hurst stayed at the Marriot
Monterey, a big hotel in a part of California which is both environmentally
fragile and evironmentally aware. Hurst’s complaint?
At the Marriott Monterey…
… the only way I can finagle new sheets every day, in this $200+/night hotel,
is to
(a) read the card and
(b) remember to put the card on my pillow every morning.
Otherwise they reserve the right to give me the same sheets each day.
(If they’re saving water as a result, shouldn’t they give me a price break?)
The language about the price of the room (which seems utterly normal for this
kind of hotel in this kind of location to me), along with the language about
wanting a "price break" for the water they’re saving, makes it clear
that Mark thinks this is a cost issue: that the main incentive here is to save
money. The idea that saving water and electricity might be a good thing anyway
doesn’t seem to have crossed his mind.
I don’t know Mark very well, but I’ve met him a couple of times, and he certainly
doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who changes his sheets every day at
home. (Does anybody do that? Donald Trump, maybe?) In fact, I daresay
that if I told him that I changed my sheets every day, he’d think me
very wasteful, and/or obsessive-compulsive to a point nearing outright mental
illness. So why does he seem to think that any halfways-decent hotel should
change his sheets automatically?
Obviously, if sheets are dirty, they should be cleaned. If a guest requests
new sheets, he should get them. And new guests get new sheets, always. But I
see no reason for a hotel guest to expect a level of wastefulness and environmental
unfriendliness which would be outright shocking to most Europeans.
Let’s just think of everything that Mark is expecting on a daily basis as a
default setting here. The bed to be stripped, and all sheets (used once) to
be scrumpled up into the laundry. Then the sheets from hundreds of hotel rooms
to be washed – a massive operation, involving vast amounts of water, electricity,
and nasty bleach. Then all those sheets to be dried, and folded, and stored,
and then made into new beds. Never mind the cost of the water, how much labour
does Mark think all this involves? How much does he think a reasonable wage
is? Why does he feel that he is entitled to all this? Because he’s paying $200
a night for a room in a full-service hotel in one of the most expensive parts
of the world?
Different places have different levels of environmental consciousness. Britain
is somewhere between Germany and California; California is somewhere between
Britain and New York. If Mark goes to a hotel in Germany, he won’t find the
hotel apologising for not changing his sheets every day, because the hotel doesn’t
think that’s anything to apologise for. They won’t change his sheets unless
they’re dirty, and he won’t notice or care. And that’s not broken: that’s as
it should be. And Mark needs to get over himself.
The water rates in that part of California are nuts. Utterly nuts. Thousands of dollars a month nuts. Staying at a home in Monerrey two summers back I was given very strict, and very parsimonious, toilet-flushing instructions. Water supplies have been tight for a while in that part of the world. So, if yer man wants fresh sheets every day, let him pay extra.
The Union Station Wyndham in Nashville was doing this five years ago (at least), and their water rates are, I’m sure, far more reasonable. The card was obvious and easy to understand (on my pillow when I got in), and I was really happy to see such a logical and sensible policy in place (plus, I’m no fan of overly starched, industrially cleaned sheets). I look for the card now every time I’m in a room. I haven’t seen one since (and I’ve been to other Wyndhams — I got the impression it was a chain-wide policy). I figured such a win/win (lower costs for the hotel while providing an environmentally friendly option) idea would be pervasive by now.
Methinks Marky Mark doesn’t get out much, becuase I’ve lived out of many hotels the past year, from Austin to Montreal and lots of points betwixt, and EVERY hotel, cheap or expensive seems to be doing a similar water conservation/environmental impact reduction program. Particularly Marriott, which seems to have a chain-wide policy. Most of us I recon, find this comforting – that a large corporation is making an effort to help reduce it’s environmental footprint. As you rightly point out, Mark needs to get over himself, and I’d add – get with the modern world, where we all could do more to limit unneccessary useages of natural resources and the production of waste. But then again maybe he’s really making a mess of those sheets every night and NEEDs them to be changed. I mean, who really likes sleeping in the wet spot anyway, especially when it’s of ones own making.
I dont think he actually stayed in the hotel there is no mention of that in the article!
My company just bought a hotel in Monterey, and we found the area to be unusually water restricted, even compared with the rest of California. There is a water moratorium on the Monterey Peninsula, and no new water fixtures can be added to residential or commercial buildings until it is lifted. Hotels in Monterey are required by the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District to post signs promoting water conservation. I understand the guest’s concern for hotels nationwide, but in Monterey specifically, this one is actually governmentally regulated.
My company just bought a hotel in Monterey, and we found the area to be unusually water restricted, even compared with the rest of California. There is a water moratorium on the Monterey Peninsula, and no new water fixtures can be added to residential or commercial buildings until it is lifted. Hotels in Monterey are required by the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District to post signs promoting water conservation. I understand the guest’s concern for hotels nationwide, but in Monterey specifically, this one is actually governmentally regulated.
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