Remember the days when you walked into a hotel and saw big, roomy wing back chairs, graceful sofas, pleasant areas to sit and read? No, I don’t either. Must have been a scene from “Downton Abbey”. I do remember those great deep red velvet couches in the Earl’s library. Now that’s furniture. These days, designers of hotel furniture seem to be really pushing the envelope to make everything less accessible, while human comfort and a place to relax is going the way of the coal furnace. “Brutalist” is just a architectural style – it’s spread to every place to park your fanny in hotels across the country.Modern hotels seem to forget that a significant percentage of their clientele is of advancing age. The gray population is more numerous and spreading out, and we can’t get up and down too easily. Even worse, we actually spend time in hotel rooms. The big chains don’t make hotel rooms for that. It’s sleep, shower, and out the door. They expect their customers to come in late and leave early. Quick turnover and a tip for the maid – that’s all they want.
There are a couple of favorite hotels in DC where we stay when visiting our daughter. One in particular had, and I do mean had, a beautiful lobby with fairly, but not extremely comfortable chairs. A couple of years ago, they redecorated in something best described as Moroccan fusion with Star Trek accents. There are long beady strands hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the lobby to “define the space”. (I know – I spend too much time watching home renovation shows.) In hotel speak, and I’m translating for you here, that means, “if you have to sit down and wait, please do it over there out of our way”. The furniture was designed either by a deranged aerobics instructor or a contortionist. Graceful curves in sort of S shapes brought the chair seats down to about six inches off the floor. This is the kind of furniture you want in police detention centers so the detainees can’t run away. Other furnishings included bamboo benches, always a favorite if you’re a contestant on “Survivor”. What’s next, floor cushions and beanbag chairs? And glass tables. You really want a lot of glass and sharp edges for families with little ones running around.
Furniture in the hotel guest rooms has taken a similar backslide. When staying in a sister hotel, there was no seating at all in the room other than a desk chair at a workstation and, well, the beds. Again, they’re playing to their young business people as this was near the convention center, but still. Interestingly, this stiff and formal “business” hotel room was one of their “handicapped accessible” units. That meant it had a walk-in shower and grab bars by the toilet. It was also at the end of the corridor, roughly a half mile from the elevator. Who’s the great design genius being paid big bucks to put all that planning together? I know why so many of these urban hotels have work-out centers. You need to be in peak physical condition to get out of their exotic seating. Actually, you need to be in good shape in this particular hotel just to walk across the lobby. It is approximately three acres of marble and glass. Why is the lobby that big, and the gift shop is the size of a phone booth? Expand the gift shop and you’ll have way more room for those $20 FBI baseball caps and $35 cherry blossom tee shirts. Hotels need to remember that older people will wander in from time to time and would like accessible, comfortable places to stay or even to sit. While my wife was sleeping late each morning, I found a more comfortable park bench across the street to sip my coffee and read the paper. Doesn’t that say something about the hotel furniture? An outside wooden bench is preferable to a bamboo torture device in the lobby. After a while, my daughter (who was working out) would join me and we’d go to one of her recommended coffee shops, with chairs and tables that reminded me of my childhood kitchen – the 1950’s if you must ask – all vinyl, metal, and formica. Who knew that “mid-century modern” would be a “thing”? We could have saved lots of stuff if we’d been able to predict market value. I remember telling my late father-in-law that, physical condition notwithstanding, had he been piece of furniture he’d have been worth a fortune. I even offered to put him on Antiques Roadshow. But typically, I digress.
It seems that furniture in general, and hotel furniture in particular, is getting lower and lower to the floor. What is with that? Are we running out of wood to extend the legs? Are the seven dwarves consulting with the major hotel chains these days? My old age shrinkage isn’t really keeping up. I guess the prevailing view is that we seniors won’t have as far to fall. Ironically, young business people seem to be getting taller, so as their clothes get longer, where they sit gets shorter. My wife and I regularly need to help each other out of hotel chairs. We see who can get up first, and then pull the other one out. To some, perhaps, not an ideal system, but it’s something we’ve perfected over the years. We’re at that age where we have to scope out the chairs to see if we can get out of them before we sit down. There’s often a distinct possibility we’ll become permanent residents. We judge hotels not by price and size but rather can we get in and out of their chairs. Similarly, we select restaurants not by menu options but by the size and comfort of their booths and seating. And don’t get me started on those places that have only those tall, pub tables. What were they thinking? Those things are dislocated limbs just waiting to happen. We walked into a restaurant in the area recently that we’d been wanting to try. Tall tables as far as the eye could see. Not a human-sized chair in the place. Do we really need to put everyone on bar stools? I told the hostess we’d be back when they added chairs and tables for old people. She thought that amusing, in that smirky way that twenty-something stick figures do.
Hotel designers – are you listening to me? You need to stop bringing in those medieval torture chamber elements that you seem to favor in your furniture design, and think more us older people. We want big, cushy, and comfortable. Forget the sleek and angular. Forget low-to-the-ground. That’s for race cars and dachshunds. If we wanted uncomfortable, we’d go camping or sleep on an ice floe. Maybe you could pop over to an assisted living facility and see how high a proper chair or sofa should be. Check out the concept of “upholstery”. That’ll give you a few creative ideas.
I'm Thinking...No! 