What makes a great hotel room for business travellers?
Whether for work, leisure or a bit of both, hotel rooms can have a bit impact on your mood and productivity.
By Staff Writers, August 19 2024
Successful hotels rarely remain static for long. After all, as the needs and tastes of travellers evolve, so too must the hotels catering to them – and one of the biggest drivers of change right now is the blurring line between work and leisure.
While the leisure side is arguably improving by the day though, it seems the balance rarely tips in favour of the business traveller, particularly when it comes to basic amenities such as work desks or business centres.
Hotel rooms with proper desks feel like a dying breed.
The recently-opened W Sydney is a good example. While beautiful and filled with restaurants and bars, there’s nary a true work desk or business lounge in sight. Given the hotel’s geared up to welcome huge conferences and events, this feels like an oversight.
It’s not the only hotel pulling desks either – those once-ubiquitous features are increasingly subbed for coffee tables and dining settings, often placed metres away from the nearest powerpoint… or nothing at all.
Which raises a couple of questions: what makes a great hotel room for business travellers? What could hotels do – say, bringing back the ‘executive’ room category – to make them functional for everyone?
Here are five things the Executive Traveller team looks for in a great hotel.
A proper working desk, with a suitable chair
Life on the road often calls for work outside the typical office visits and meetings, with a quiet hotel room pulling double duty as a de facto workplace – provided that room is set up for business.
In our experience, there’s simply no replacement for a proper in-room desk. While sofas or armchairs suffice for a quick email or two, when there’s serious work to be done, the furniture should reflect that. A desk lamp is appreciated too.
A small dining or coffee table is now often all you get.
If not provided in-room, perhaps one or two hotel rooms (in these larger properties) could be converted into shared work spaces where travellers book in for a half or full day.
Power points: plural
From smartwatches and smartphones through to headphones, tablets, laptops, power banks, electric shavers, hair straighteners – and for some tech-toting travellers, cameras too – rooms with few power points simply don’t meet the needs of modern guests.
When you add in the multitude of hotel appliances that require power, such as minibar fridges, TVs, bedside clocks, lights, and coffee makers, it’s clear that power points for guest use should be separate.
The first rule of hotel rooms: you can never have too many power points.
DepositPhotos
DepositPhotos
Being unobstructed, unoccupied, easy to access, and located where you’ll need them most, we’d expect to find power points near working desks, sofas or armchairs, and on both sides of the bed: ideally, with AC and USB ports for convenience.
In fact, with many modern devices now supporting wireless charging, having those capabilities in the room makes forgetting your charger a problem of the past.
Not just ‘free’ WiFi, but high-speed WiFi
Basic WiFi is just like a sofa or armchair – it’s fine for emails, but high-speed WiFi is what’s often needed to get the job done.
Many hotels do make speedy WiFi available, although it often attracts a hefty access charge: and what you’d pay over just a night or two can easily exceed the cost of a month’s high-speed connection at home.
Where those charges do apply, we’d expect they’d at least be waived for a chain’s top-tier travellers, and arguably its mid-tiered guests too.
Blackout curtains and soundproofing
Switching time zones is never easy. One day you’re in Perth, the next you’re in LA, and your sleeping habits are left hovering somewhere across the Pacific. A quick power nap can certainly help, but to do that you need a dark room and no sound distractions.
To allow this, blackout curtains and rooms with walls thicker than tissue paper should be the norm, particularly at properties where conferences and events are held or located nearby.
A bedside table is appreciated too.
As many know, this isn’t always the case, but a writer can dream…
Chromecast or HDMI ports on the TV
In the years gone by, hotels often ‘locked’ in-room TVs to the house entertainment system – much to the chagrin of their guests – but many are now unblocking those precious HDMI ports and giving guests the freedom to connect their own devices.
For business travellers, packing a simple HDMI cable could make for a better-prepared presentation, by using the in-room screen as you would a projector while rehearsing your pitch.
Unwinding after a long day? Use that same setup to watch your favourite shows from your gadget on the big screen, just like at home.
Chromecast, a Bluetooth speaker and a lounge: everything needed to unwind.
Even better, if the in-room TV supports Apple AirPlay, or Chromecast – a more universal platform available to both Apple and Android devices, as well as Mac and Windows computers – you’ll be able to watch what you like, without the cable.
Combine that functionality with high-speed WiFi, and you’re onto a winner for not only business guests, but leisure travellers too.
Executive Traveller readers, it’s now over to you: what makes a great hotel room for business travellers in your books? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
24 Aug 2017
Total posts 12
In addition to those listed.
Comfortable bed. I want a good night's sleep before I get up and get into the grind.
Fast lifts, and plenty of them. It sucks massively to be late for something because you are waiting for a slow lift.
Good coffee at brekky.
Good air conditioning system that's easy to figure out. Nothing worse than getting into a hotel room and trying to figure out how to actually get the temperature to be comfortable.
When it comes to the desk, I personally prefer that the TV is visible from where I sit, because my habit is to have some sort of background TV. Bonus points if the TV can be tilted towards me.
Good toilet paper. Seriously. Why do so many hotels give sandpaper for your bum.
Delta Air Lines - SkyMiles
16 Oct 2017
Total posts 159
The caveat about Chromecast etc is of course the wi-fi. No-one wants constant buffering interrupting their entetainment but that will always happen on poor hotel wi-fi. Another reason to pick a hotel with decent data speed. Even then, don't expect HD to work without issues, set for SD viewing.
Delta Air Lines - SkyMiles
16 Oct 2017
Total posts 159
Agree with PCHammond, comfortable bed. That includes pillows. Not foam slabs like bricks. Not cheap feathers that rustle in your ear all night. OK, first world issues but that's the quality we should expect in a good business hotel.
22 Sep 2017
Total posts 96
Agree about the desk, with minimum depth of 600mm. Too many places offer a small ledge cluttered with their own stuff. There needs to be space to use a full-size laptop, read, write, spread out other gadgets, and have a bit of food at hand (if trying to finish the presentation at the last minute).
And of course, bad WiFi means an immediate negative review. This includes connections that drop back to the login screen at random times (of course during that critical call).
Virgin Australia - Velocity Rewards
24 Jan 2018
Total posts 775
An impeccably clean room is essential (and a deal breaker when its not). I often look under the bed for a build-up of fluff/lint/dust because of sensitivity. Next is the exhaust register in the bathroom. If it's clogged with fluff and lint I know I'm in trouble. A request for a different room often results in the room being properly cleaned before nightfall.
If I'm a first time guest I'll call ahead, explain I have an allergy and ask when was the last 'deep clean' for the room I'll be assigned. If Reception doesn't know (which they often do not at the time I call), I'll ask for the hotel GM (a good one will at least make sure your room is thoroughly cleaned ('deeply', if need be) before you arrive.
30 Mar 2014
Total posts 21
Decent lighting - I don't understand why so many hotels have such poor lighting in their rooms. How hard is it to give guests a decent, bright central light, ideally with a dimmer switch for extra control? They can add one or two of their usual, lower-power lamps on top of that......
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
16 Nov 2017
Total posts 8
I suspect the poor lighting relates to showing up the wear and tear on a room. The lower the lighting level the longer the room seems to be in good condition!
01 Dec 2011
Total posts 34
I also agree about the desk. I only travel for leisure, but I like room to read the paper on the desk. Plenty of accessible power points as well.
QFP
22 Jan 2013
Total posts 94
Good bed that dose not sag on one side and a great powerful shower and I’m happy.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
26 Nov 2012
Total posts 127
Travelling overseas I’ve come to really appreciate unobstructed power points with international plug options. Unobstructed so if you have bulky plugs they work and generally on a flat surface is better than a wall, especially in Japan as those plugs don’t hold much weight (like a Mac power charger)
I also appreciate the same next to the bed.
And a bonus is USB A & C points.
I know this may be slightly off topic, but a decent sized umbrella is also appreciated as I just found out here in Madrid 💦💦💦
26 Mar 2020
Total posts 2
Lights that you can see by in every part of the room, with switches that are easily accessible and do not require you to test every single switch to work out what controls what.
Room service with an edible burger on the menu.
06 Oct 2021
Total posts 14
Adequate shelving/stand for suitcases - not just one (more of a family issue!)
Somewhere to sit in the bathroom, not just perching the bath edge, for foot-drying time
A nightlight at the bathroom entrance for night navigation in an unfamiliar environment
Above all, no buzzing fridge compressors (who normally has these in a bedroom at home? I usually turn them off)
24 Aug 2011
Total posts 1225
Good soundproofing. Not only from noises outside but I really don't want to be woken by what is going on in the room beside me...and sometimes it is more than just the noise of their TV!!
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
05 Oct 2016
Total posts 117
Agree that hotel lifts are often a bugbear - slow and wait for them so long. Not so fussed about power points, i always take double adaptors because I have to take foreign plugs anyway. But number 1 thing I always choose over anything else is the shower! I only book rooms that have a walk in shower or at least not one over a bath!! And dunno whether it's just an Australian thing but (At least UK and EU anyways) hotels never have face washers included with the towels anymore!!?
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
09 Jun 2017
Total posts 77
Agreeing with other comments:
If I stay in a room with a shower over the bath, it’s the last time I stay at that hotel.
My company does not allow booking of suites and club level rooms so for my mid level business hotel room that I book I expect a very comfortable bed, decent internet, decent lighting, a work desk with a proper chair and plenty of power points, also power points next to the bed (both sides please).
TV with Chromecast as well as at least a couple of English language channels. iPad with a VPN has sorted this to a fair degree but sometimes its nice to just flick on something rubbish like Discovery Channel!
Good soundproofing. I really don’t want to hear what is going on next door particularly if I am in a room with a less than soundproof, connecting door. Also, a number of times I have been surrounded by family groups with out of control kids running from room to room for hours on end (really common to experience this in India). Normally sorted with some stern words but I also have been known to give a bit back by cranking the TV up to 11 when I go out for my 5am run!
Qantas
02 May 2016
Total posts 62
Agree with all comments on hotel rooms, my pet hate is lighting systems so smart it takes you 2o mins to figure out how to turn them all off but for me apart from room facilities a good business hotel also has good work areas in the lobby where you can get out of the room and work, meet a colleague or client and get decent coffee while working.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
23 May 2018
Total posts 28
No access to HDMI/USB on TV is ridiculous but quite often TV is built into the wall anyhow.
I love at hotels still trying to flog a $20 video for you to watch. The larger to hotel chain the worse it is.
Just put access to some streaming services like Netflix and problems solved
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer - Chairmans Lounge
01 Sep 2011
Total posts 416
It continues to frustrate me the lack of power points in convenient places and visible in a hotel room. It would be a good idea if there was a variety of power point types. No hotel should be charging for high speed wifi these days. Tea and coffee making facilities and water should be a given, along with a good iron and ironing board.
Cathay Pacific - The Marco Polo Club
20 Jun 2013
Total posts 63
Speaking of lighting, why is it some, (even high end hotels) only have a ceiling light that's so bright and bedside lamps so dim? It's either too bright or too dim in the room to be properly comfortable.
18 Mar 2016
Total posts 39
My wife always comments, this room was designed by a man as there is not provision for a lady to sit and put her makeup on.
Mirrors are often in obscure places ,behind doors etc.
Those hotels who don’t use the pump action dispensers in the bathroom (which I hate), usually provide little bottles of Shampoo/Conditioner etc.
Usually ,the lettering on the bottles is SO small, it is impossible to read and presents a problem when you are already in the shower.
Lastly, a small bedside clockI IS essential. Forget your phone, I Pad, TV etc.
None are as good as rolling over and reading the time. The small amount of light emitted, is also a handy night light.
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