Hostelries can be hostile

The current vogue is to refer to upscale hostelries as ‘boutique’ hotels, giving the desperate-to-impress traveler visions of shopping on Rodeo Drive or some other equally posh Mecca of extravagance. The word boutique is simply French for small store, or department within a larger store, but it exudes, in translation at least, a hint of having arrived. Something very important to arrivees. ‘Arrivee’, by the way, is French for pretentious bastard with more money than sense.

A few years ago hotels and motels (which used to be called auto-courts until the owners of such decided the term was a little too reminiscent of images of the Joad family making their way to ‘Californy’) came to be called ‘inns’. Actually there are still a lot of inns around. Most of the places that aren’t boutique hotels still stick with the nomenclature.

I expect the idea of co-opting the world inn was to give the impression that this was something of a cozy Dickensian hostelry, rather than a heartless steel and glass tower. However, if you study authentic Dickensian inns, you would find the heartless tower much more agreeable. But, the Dickensian of myth suggests goose-down duvets, brass bedsteads, and copper bedwarmers, and a crackling fire right within the room. The décor wallpaper and duvet cover would be, of course, Laura Ashley with an unremitting vengeance.

But, I say call hotels, motels, or flophouses what you will, they are ultimately just places that for a certain paid sum, one can hit the sack and hope for a reasonable night’s sleep, without being too distracted by noisy guests in adjoining rooms, drunks in the corridor, sirens in the streets, screams in the streets, or developing obsessive thoughts about just how stained the mattress might be beneath all this seemingly spotless linen. Oh, and why should items in the mini-bar cost more than a case of the stuff in a liquor store?

Regardless of such concerns, I have generally enjoyed the places I have stayed in over the years. I have put my feet up in many North American hostelries, as well as throughout the United Kingdom, Europe, Hawaii, and the South Pacific. They haven’t all been splendid, and many were far from luxurious, but they fulfilled the function they were called upon to fulfill at the time. And, my demands are few. So are my personal caveats. I shy away from places with cute names like Bide-a-Wee, and I want no truck with a place that calls itself ‘Kozy’ anything. People who substitute a K for a word that should have a C are either excruciatingly twee, illiterate, or raging international Trotskyites. Not to be trusted, any of them.

The less expensive rooms of my experience are basically cookie-cutter in accoutrements. They all generally have the same chenille bedspread, with the only variation being in color, as long as those colors are pink, white or beige. They will also have the same vinyl headboard, simulated wood desk; orange, yellow and brown curtains that invariably fail to keep out the flashing neon light of the bowling alley across the street. There will also be a few questionable, though not horrific, stains on the carpet. Oh, and there will be a fake oil painting of a quaint bucolic scene bolted to the wall. As if anybody would actually steal one of those hideous things. Oh, and a TV. A TV for which the remote, as often as not, won’t work.

Each time I enter a new room I follow a basic routine. My first stop is the bathroom, sometimes out of necessity, but more usually out of curiosity. I flush to make sure the mechanism on the john works. I regard the bathtub, usually with certain dismay, since they are invariably midget-sized. I scrutinize the toiletries, the little shampoos and soaps just to see if they will be worthwhile pilfering. There is always a shower cap. I imagine few shower caps get ripped off.

My next stop is that aforementioned television. Have you ever noticed that motel and hotel TVs are often some obscure brand like ‘Eddie’s?’ Expensive rooms have big flat screen top-end sets that make one feel a bit cheated upon returning to the crappy and archaic home TV. Cheap rooms are better in that regard because you don’t suffer TV envy when the vacation or business trip is over. A lot of hotel/motel TVs have extra-cost cable connections that will bring you relatively recent motion pictures or sleazy porn right to your own home-away-from-home. Some sort of a nod to contemporary mores, more for the lonely commercial traveller than anyone else, I suspect.

I never really bother much with the ‘in case of fire’ escape routes. If there is a fire, I am going to be in such a blind panic that I won’t remember the diagram, in any case. I just know one rule, therein: Don’t take the damn elevator!

Mini-bar equals rip-off. Designed only for those too lazy or afraid to go down to the lounge, or for those who were silly enough to no bring their own supply at a fraction of the cost, or for alcoholics who have finished all their own stuff and who are still not ready to call it a night. Lushes are notoriously bad planners.

As I suggested, my observations, and in some cases, caveats, apply only to the middle ground of hostelries. I have stayed in some really crummy places, rarely, and some very high end digs, equally rarely. We stayed once, at off-season rate, at a very, very posh Waikiki hotel. My basic feeling was I didn’t even want to hit the beach. I just wanted to stay in the room. It was a room that put to the lie my long-held belief that a hotel room is just a place to lay one’s head, so why pay the big bucks? I know now that if I had the big bucks on a regular basis, I would go top-drawer all the way. But, I digress.

But, even with cheaper forms of accommodation, I do have my standards. When I am paying hard-earned money to avoid sleeping rough on a park-bench or in a railway station, I expect a basic value in return for my expenditure. For example, I would never think of staying at the following places:

- A room with more than three beds. One of which seems to be already occupied.

- A room with what looks like bullet holes in the wall.

- A room in which the door to the hallway only locks from the outside.

- A room with no window. Even if it overlooks the local stockyards, I demand a window.

- A room in which there is a gas heater that suggests ‘Use at your own risk.’

- A hotel or motel with hourly rates, with a notice saying 'Mandy' is available from 9 p.m. to midnight.

- A hotel of which the clerk at the travel agency has told you: “Well, if there’s nothing else available, we can always get you into the Buena Vista. You do not want the Buena Vista, believe me.

- A hotel of which, when the address is given, causes a cabbie to shake his head with dismay and cross himself.

- A hotel that asks you to leave the names of next-of-kin when registering.

- A hotel in which the fire-charred areas above the windows have been inadequately covered by cheap paint.

So, maybe before you begin your next vacation, you might want to take this guide with you. Just some of the stuff they don't tell you on Expedia.com.