Crowne Plaza Hotels Monitor Your Snoring
Original Story: http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/hotel-guests-lose-sleep-snoring-noises/story?id=14663251
Crowne Plaza began deploying snoring monitors in June.
“The use of a snore monitor, who patrols the hotel’s quiet zones to ensure guests remain undisturbed, is an easy and effective way of ensuring our guests can sleep easy,” Eavis says.
If the patroler thinks a guest is too loud, they’ll ask the front desk to contact the room and give solutions for toning down the noise, such as bath products with soothing scents for a snorer. The monitor might also “knock on the door … as an absolute last resort.” Eavis says.
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Hotel noise is a problem, especially for jet lagged business travelers, but for Crowne Plaza’s retail pricing, $120-$140 with two beds, noise should not be an issue. Perhaps, instead of monitoring hallways and waking/relocating snoring guests, the hotel should build structures with adequate sound insulation between rooms.
If snoring can penetrate the walls, then guests will also hear toilet flushing, phone calls, sexual intercourse, and televisions. This is to be expected at a $29 Motel 6, but a higher-end facility ought to provide more privacy and a more relaxing environment. I should be able to watch TV at 2am and snore like a train without disturbing someone next door.
Crowne Plaza is, after all, a near-luxury hotel chain, not a campsite, so there is a reasonable expectation of peace, quiet, and privacy. That silence ought to be provided by thick walls and floors rather than monitoring and disturbing sleeping guests.
Although the Crowne Plaza I stayed at on Powers Ferry Road in Atlanta was quiet, it lacked adequate heat, smelled musty/smoky (it was a non-smoking room), and had little roaches crawling around the bathroom. I notified the front desk about the problem following morning but they responded with indifference.
Over the tens of thousands of miles I’ve traveled, I have only once been able to hear a guest through the wall. Early one morning at a Country Inn in Bentonville, Arkansas I heard the person next door flushing their toilet with astounding sonic definition, as if I was standing in their bathroom.
I suspect, then, that they heard the porn I was watching on my laptop the night before with equal clarity.
Droning, repetitive sounds like refrigerators, televisions, leaky toilets, and snoring draw the attention of unhappy guests, but some of the loudest, briefest sounds go unnoticed. When I was nineteen I worked at a Doubletree Hotel in Spokane, Washington. I served food and a few drinks to a gentleman whose room was located in a corridor on the far side of the building.
The next day, they found him dead with a rifle in his mouth. He blew his brains out and no one noticed, and I was the last person to see him alive. Based on phone records, they discovered that he had been arguing with his wife which prompted his hotel stay.
I suppose the Doubletree deserves praise for outstanding sound insulation.
I spent the night at the Coeur D’alene Resort (4 star hotel overlooking Lake Couer D’Alene) one night with my ex. It was a nice room, floor just below the penthouse, overlooking the lake.
We thought it was rather nice until the guest next door came into his room, and we could clearly hear every word of his normal-volume cell phone conversation. We spent the rest of the evening listening to him watching TV, taking a shower, etc. Needless to say it “damaged the mood” of our first anniversary.
Not to mention someone had opened a bunch of drinks in the mini-fridge, drunk half of them so they’d still seem full to the touch, and put them back! We had to notify the front desk so we’d not be charged.
Cost for one night, including a number of drinks, dinner at their high end restaurant, and breakfast in our room the next day — $620.
Definitely NOT worth the money!
Crown Plaza has been steadily slipping the last 10 years. Somehow the sale of a large number of their hotels went unnoticed and whomever purchased them has a philospohy to do as little as it takes to call these buildings “hotels.”
You should’ve seen the kitchen of the ‘premier restaurant’ at one I worked in during a business meeting in Austin, Texas…dispicable. The room itself was a dump and everything was as dilapitated as a cruise ship left to rot in the harbor.