There’s one way you can help me sleep better (please)

I’ve got a little favour to ask…

It won’t take much of your time and it could mean the difference between a good night’s sleep and me trying to work out how to turn off the buzzing minibar at 1am without ripping it off the wall. It could mean the difference between a few hours of rest after a long day exploring a new place and my husband screaming at children who are running up and down the corridor at 3am (yes, this really happened — Disneyland Paris, 2005). It will definitely mean the difference between me enjoying the hotel I’ve spent hard-earned cash on and spending the day searching for a hotel to move to so I don’t start plotting ways to end all humanity.

So what is this little favour?

I need you to write hotel reviews. More specifically I need you to write reviews that mention the noise levels of the hotel. I don’t care if you’re an American and have turned up in Paris or Venice and the rooms are ‘so small I can barely stand up’. We know the rooms in our centuries-old listed buildings are small, but we like them. I’m also not overly concerned if the car park is a little tight or if the receptionist doesn’t jump at your every last little whim. These things won’t disrupt my holiday or cause anxiety or an increase in tinnitus levels. They are minor inconveniences — knock off a star if you must, but I only have one concern — is the room quiet enough to sleep in?

So, please, when you write your next review, in between moaning about or gushing over the range of pastries at breakfast, take a moment and think about the noises you heard during your stay.

• Were the walls in the room paper thin so you could hear everything going on in the room next door?
• Did the bare wood floors make the people on the floor above sound like they were partying with a herd of tiny elephants?
• Did the air con hiss and whine all night despite being turned off?

Quiet night? It’ll cost you

A recent article in the Guardian talked about a new trend for sleep tourism. Fancy hotels who have created plush rooms with soundproofing, comfortable beds and blackout curtains promising a great night’s sleep. Now, excuse me for being picky, but surely the aim of every hotel should be to offer a great night’s sleep?

Yes, depending on what you spend the bedding might be fancier, the shower gel might have come from an over-hyped apothecary in Mayfair or you might be lucky to get some PG Tips and the slowest boiling kettle in the world. But a great night’s sleep should be the number one aim for anyone opening a hotel. What the else are you there for?

Perhaps if more of us write about the noise issues then hotels might start to pay attention. If people aren’t staying at their hotel because the lifts are noisy or housekeeping bangs their vacuum against the door at 7am, then they might do something about it. If not it’s going to affect their bottom line.

Recent hotel noise issues

Here’s just a handful of noise-related issues that have led to middle-of-the-night rage:

• A buzzing minibar in a £250 a night room — the plug was hidden behind a panel so I couldn’t even turn it off.
• A loose manhole cover on the road outside — nothing the hotel can do directly but they can report it to the council. When asked if they’d done this they responded, “No, it’s always been like that.”
• A lift that every time the door opened bellowed “first floor” loud enough to wake us in the room furthest away from it. I’d hate to have been in the room opposite.
• A hotel receptionist in Paris who when I complained about the traffic noise and asked to be moved to a courtyard room responded, “It’s Paris”, in that spectacularly haughty way that only Parisians can pull off. I appreciate it’s a major city with all the accompanying noise — I’ve stayed in Paris many times. But I didn’t expect to stay in a hotel where they’d apparently opted for tracing paper rather than soundproof windows.
• A beautiful old hotel in the hills above Donostia / San Sebastián — lovely and peaceful until the dog on the farm next door started barking at 4pm and continued through until quarter past ten.

Some of these things the hotels should have thought about when they were being built — oh the doors slam really loudly, perhaps we’ll go with a different style? Some of these things can’t be changed — yes the centuries-old buildings in Europe are beautiful, but they’re often not practical or easily modernised.

But I’d like to know about these things so I can make an informed choice. And writing a review that comments on the noise levels, even just a few words, could make the difference between me spending a lot of money for barely a wink of sleep or waking from a night where it feels like I’ve been cocooned in a marshmallow made of love and kittens (Sofitel Luxembourg, that’s all you).

Of course, some of these things wouldn’t bother other people — I admit as a person with tinnitus and misophonia I’m perhaps more sensitive to noise than others. But with 7.1 million people in the UK suffering from tinnitus and one in five having misophonia, a little bit of thought about noise will go a long way.