[chefandy]

They know what they’re doing. Most hotels ‘are’ built for work, but they’re built for what most workers use them for: work travel. Though probably common for developers, I’ll bet it’s pretty unusual for the other like 96% of people to want to do deep work in a hotel room. Especially if you’re on the road for work, you’re probably the sort of worker that needs to physically be somewhere remote to accomplish a goal, which makes it even less likely you’re going to be doing deep work in your hotel room. Most have “business centers” where you can bang out a zoom call, rally the troops before a meeting you flew in for, print something out for a presentation, or whatever. I’m sure most professional use cases are far better served by those accommodations than amping up their rooms for the handful of people that need to be in a room by themselves sitting in one spot for long enough for the chair to be a big factor while they travel.

[godelski]

Hanlon's Razor

I think there's a simpler explanation: most people don't do work when they go to hotels, they do the work like you are discussing. Doesn't mean they are intentionally being hostile to remote workers.

One thing I've realized about the world is that a lot of people do things just because others are. "Momentum is a bitch." I will bet you very few people are thinking this way, at least very few that make decisions. And the ones that do probably think it is not worth the money. There's a ton of things where markets don't exist simply because the environment doesn't exist, so the people that can make the environment don't because there is no market. It's the whole "build it and they will come" thing. People are very risk adverse. People are hard to move. Would hotels benefit from this? Probably. I mean even not just considering nomads, most people work from their computers[0].

But it very easily could be one of those things where there's push because there's no market and there's no market because there's no push.

[0] The way people have been talking about working at CES has sounded silly. There was a LTT video where they mentioned how WiFi used to be better in some locations so those rooms were more desirable and the hotel's solution was to make it standard for everyone. They seemed to be suggesting that they brought down the quality rather than balanced.

[chefandy]

I’m not sure how what I said could be interpreted as suggesting they are hostile to remote workers.

And I think there’s a very good chance hotels would not benefit from this. Maybe in a tech center, but that’s a tiny fraction of hotels. Good office chairs are designed to be very adjustable, but they do tend to break when people twist one thing too far the wrong way because they don’t know how it works, and it would probably take staff 10 minutes just to figure out it was broken rather than just misadjusted. They’re also expensive as hell, and charging a guest $3000 because their luggage got caught on and tore up the mesh seat is probably not going to fly. Small higher-res monitors are also more expensive than huge TVs, and as or more delicate. The staff would spend more time than is probably worth it telling gran and gramps that they can’t use the “little television” like that. All of this stuff has to be handled with smoothness and grace 24/7 by a desk staff that don’t regularly use these items in their professional lives. You can’t just say “it’s a computer monitor gramps don’t use it” and hang up the phone. Many people also consider office equipment ugly, and how the room visually hits when you walk in is a huge consideration. Some weary overworked travel-worn office drone would probably want to jump out the window if they opened the door to their safe place of respite only to see a the better part of a corporate workstation looking back at them.

Designing experiences can be complicated and difficult, and that’s even more true because many of the most important aspects of it aren’t even consciously perceived by the intended audience. They all just fit organically unto a unified experience.

[matt-p]

The best solution to all these problems is to have a extra 'co working' room that any guest, or for a fee anyone, can use and just bill an extra $15/day to use it (or whatever) including the coffee machine.

Working and sleeping in the same room is actually not that great for you most the time.

[chefandy]

Most hotels that I’ve stayed in recently have one that they call a “business center” or similar. They’re the new hotel gym.

[matt-p]

Most that I've stayed in don't but often have pools and gyms. I suspect it comes down to if they're targeting a 'business traveler', for example it's definitely a thing in 'corporate' hotels or ones by a airport.

[ghaff]

I have very rarely used a business center in literally years of days traveling on business. Maybe I've printed a few pages over time.

[chefandy]

Most of the hotels I stay at are on the east coast, so that might make a difference because of how much business travel there is there, but even the more family-focused ones in touristy areas have them.

[FredFS456]

> There was a LTT video where they mentioned how WiFi used to be better in some locations so those rooms were more desirable and the hotel's solution was to make it standard for everyone. They seemed to be suggesting that they brought down the quality rather than balanced.

This was from their podcast 'WAN Show' a week or two back, specifically about hotels in Las Vegas.

[gruturo]

I agree with your point, generally, but after COVID-19, remote working is opening new use cases: I occasionally like to travel to somewhere nice, far away from the office, and work from there for a week, because I'm now allowed to.

So I too now care about a decent chair, desk and maybe even a tv I could turn into a second screen. Wifi can be there or not, I bring my own connectivity just to play it safe, this is now quite cheap. Bonus if the place is a couple time zones away from my office so I have my mornings or afternoons free.

I'm not a huge fan of AirBnB but it's been more reliable than hotels for a few of these factors: hotel TVs are locked-down and many won't accept an HDMI input, assuming there's a socket at all. Normally you're not offered (barring extravagant prices) more than just a bedroom, so the chance of table and chair being any good (or existing) are not so good), etc.

[chefandy]

As far as business investments go, I’d need to see some really solid market research showing enough people were willing to choose a hotel for these amenities in-room rather than a one with a “business center” as many currently have, a coworking space, coffee shop, or even a public library. People wanting specialized private spaces like that don’t generally look to hotels to meet their needs, and considering how quickly hotel room outfitting expenses scale, it really has to be worthwhile. For example, an in-room stationary bike would probably be cheaper and more popular than a good office chair and monitor, but it just doesn’t make sense because enough people will be satisfied with an in-hotel fitness center. I think its really easy to assume our use cases are far more universal than they are.

[elicksaur]

As someone who has thought about this remote style, but hasn’t done it, I don’t think I’d want to be in the hotel room much. I’d much rather find a coffee shop to work from where I can get some of the vibe of the city while still working.

Otherwise, you’d only get a few hours per day in the evening of experiencing anything you couldn’t do at home, so what’d be the point of spending home rent +hotel +travel for the week?

[ghaff]

I suppose it depends somewhat on why you're there and how well you can work in an ambient social environment. Mind you, I don't really disagree but, if I'm focused on a computer screen, I'm not sure how schlepping my laptop to a random coffeeshop is that different from being in my hotel room.