Please Make Up My Room
In his 1987 novel The New Confessions, my favourite author, William Boyd, describes how an amorous breakfasting couple leave a hotel bed ‘covered in honey trails, toast crumbs, coffee stains and a cigarette burn.’
The woman reassures her lover: “Chambermaids have seen it all,” she says; “they’re like nurses, nothing shocks them.”
That’s just as well, if the revelations of the executive housekeeper at a luxury London hotel are anything to go by. He told a Sunday colour magazine recently that one guest checked out and left a blow-up doll sitting in his empty bed. The same guest returned two weeks later and left another one!
The item most often stolen from a hotel room isn’t apparently the bathrobe or slippers – it’s the hairdryer. That’s why so many hotels now have permanent ones wired to the wall. The most left-behind item is a mobile phone charger.
Other interesting facts:
• Chambermaids are now known as room attendants
• It takes an average of 28 minutes to clean a room
• Men are tidier than women and the Japanese are the tidiest
• The room attendant knocks once, then once again and if there’s still no response, he/she enters … whatever you’re doing.
by Andy Moreton
