Hotels Should Tell You How Loud Your Room Is
It's around 11 pm in a nice Melbourne CDB hotel. I'm wearing noise-cancelling headphones over earplugs, and I can still hear it. Tick, tick, tick, tick. It's the pedestrian crossing at the intersection below, and the sound echoes off the buildings every time the lights go green.
I'd expected some noise and packed for it.
Same Hotel, Two Very Different Rooms
This wasn't a budget place. It belongs to one of the big hotel groups, and I was paying decent money. My room faced one of the busiest streets in the CBD. I could have lived with the traffic, but not with the crossing signal. That signal is there for a good reason: it helps people with low vision cross safely. That's exactly why it isn't going anywhere, and why the hotel should know which rooms sit right above it.
I went down and asked to move. They couldn't do it that night, but they moved me the next day to the other side of the building. The difference was night and day: same hotel, same booking, and nothing at booking or check-in told me which room I'd get.
It wasn't the first time this has happened to me. I don't like to complain, and usually I just put up with it. This time I literally couldn't sleep.
The Idea
Every hotel room should have a night-time noise rating, shown when you book and again when a room is assigned. It could be a simple 1 to 5 scale, running from "quiet, courtyard-facing" to "street-facing, expect noise".
The obvious objection is commercial: label a room noisy and nobody wants it at full price. So don't charge full price. Make the noisy rooms a little cheaper. Plenty of people sleep through anything and would happily take the discount, while light sleepers like me would pay more for the quiet side. Every room still sells.
The Data Is Already There
I work in data, and this is the part that bugs me most. Hotels already log noise complaints against room numbers, track which rooms guests ask to move out of, and read the reviews that mention not being able to sleep. When one room keeps turning up in those records, that's a pattern. The next guest booked into that room should be told, or should pay less for it.
Next time I book a hotel, I'd just like to know which room I'm getting before I find out the hard way.