A great room is a piece of choreography, and most of it happens below the level at which you consciously notice. The couples who care about travel eventually become the couples who care about rooms, and the couples who care about rooms eventually notice the same ten things.
Here they are, in the order they usually decide the trip.
1. The lock
A good hotel has a lock that turns smoothly and lands with a soft, decisive weight. A bad hotel has a lock that requires two hands and a small prayer. This is the first physical fact of the room; it sets the tone. If a lock is loose or grinding, an entire dinner will feel unfinished.
2. The curtain
Ninety per cent of what you paid for is going to depend on whether the curtain closes properly. A great curtain is heavy, meets the wall at both ends, and overlaps in the middle. It is the difference between waking up in the room you paid for and waking up in the room the corridor decided to give you.
You can tell a good hotel from a great one at the curtain.
3. The chair, other than the desk chair
Every hotel has a desk chair. A great room has a chair that isn't a desk chair — an armchair by a lamp, a small sofa near the window, a chaise by the tub. It's the chair that says: this room is designed to be sat in, not just slept in. If a room has nowhere to sit that isn't the bed or the desk, you've been sold a bedroom, not a room.
4. The light at the head of the bed
A functional bedside lamp is a hospitality decision. A working switch on your side of the bed, without leaning across your partner, is the difference between a warm room and a cold one. The best rooms have three levels: reading, ambient, and asleep. The worst have one broken toggle attached to a nightstand.
5. The bathroom door
The room stops being a couple's room the moment the bathroom door does. A real door with a real handle is the mark of a serious hotel. A pocket door that sticks halfway is a rehearsal for a bad conversation. A sliding barn door in a hotel bathroom is a signal that you are about to be disappointed by everything else.
6. The water temperature at three a.m.
Nobody ever asks about this. Everyone remembers it. You will get up in the night. If the sink water is instantly warm, you're in a good hotel. If you have to run the tap for forty seconds, you're in a hotel that outsourced its plumbing to the lowest bidder.
7. The wardrobe with weight
Cheap hotels have hangers that come off the rail. Good ones have proper wooden hangers, enough of them, and drawer space that isn't just for the ironing board. Weight is the tell. If the wardrobe rattles, so will the trip.
8. The angle of the bed
A great room has the bed facing something specific — a window, a view, a fireplace, a piece of art bigger than a photograph. A bad room has the bed facing a television. This is a personal decision that hotel designers have made for you, and it is worth noticing. The bed's orientation is the room's opinion of what you're supposed to be looking at when you wake up.
9. The absence of hospitality noise
Ice machines are hospitality noise. Vending machines are hospitality noise. A humming corridor light three metres from your door is hospitality noise. A great room is chosen for what isn't there. Ask, before you book: is the room over the bar? Is it under the ice machine? Is it near the lift? A hotel that answers precisely is a hotel that's been asked before.
10. The morning kettle
Almost every great room I remember has one small thing in common: a kettle you actually want to use, next to a pair of cups you don't want to break. It is a small mercy. It says: you can begin the morning without leaving each other. You can begin the morning quietly.
Small mornings, in a good room, are what a great trip is actually made of.
Everything else — the marble, the branded slippers, the pillow menu that lists twelve pillows — is decoration. A great room is a room designed by someone who has slept in it. Book those.