Salon :: Tech & Business

Ask the pilot: The worst thing about hotel rooms? It's not the ugly carpeting. Plus: Why don't planes carry parachutes for passengers?

There are lots of things to dislike about hotel rooms: temperamental air conditioning, ugly carpeting, toe-breaking doorjambs. Here's another one: cardboard brochures. Nowadays, every hotel amenity, from room service to Wi-Fi, is hawked through one or more annoying cardboard advertisements displayed throughout the room. You can hardly put your bag down without knocking over a pile of them. They're everywhere -- on the dresser, in the closet, on your pillow. To be perfectly honest, I'm a bit compulsive when it comes to clutter, but a dozen or more of these things in the typical single room is ridiculous. I resent having to spend five minutes, checking in after an exhausting red-eye, gathering up these diabolical doodads and heaving them into a corner where they belong. The photograph that accompanies this column was taken a couple of weeks ago at the Hilton in Athens. It shows a particularly bountiful harvest of at least 15 laminated cards, signs, menus and assorted promotional materials. About the only useful item is the notepad. (This in a hotel that charges 6 euros for a Coke from the minibar, and 26 euros for Internet.) I wouldn't mind if this litter was placed unobtrusively, but it tends to be exactly in the way -- plastered across the desk, for instance, or hogging up what limited shelf space exists in the bathroom. My favorites are the signs boasting of the hotel's dedication to the environment.<p>...</p><img src="http://feeds.salon.com/~r/salon/tech/~4/175626351" height="1" width="1"/>

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