Hotel Woes — My Recent Moment of Hypocrisy

We recently traveled to another state to celebrate my late Grandpa Tony's life with friends and family. The event was held in a small city, and by this I mean that the hotel offering is limited. The quality of hotels are 3-star and below. My husband, who travels for work and accumulates loyalty points faster than we can spend them, had a large number of points with one chain, and we opted to save money on the trip by using the points.

Last year I stayed in a dog-friendly hotel and had an absolutely miserable experience in which I was placed next to a room housing a dog that barked all night long for several nights in a row. No amount of complaining did anything to address the problem. The lesson I took away from that experience was that I would never again book a room in a dog-friendly hotel. That's a great idea in theory, not so great an idea when all of the available hotels are dog-friendly.

I went into this trip hoping and praying we didn't get placed next to a noisy dog. However, that turned out not to be our problem on this adventure. On this occasion, we happened to pick a hotel where a large number of teen athletes were staying in order to participate in a weekend tournament. The parents were in one room drinking. The teenagers were left to run wild on the property—racing down the halls in hysterics; entering and exiting rooms constantly, each time letting the doors slam shut behind them; loudly chattering and laughing in the room next door.

All of this occurred after 10pm. We tried politely asking the kids and the adults to keep the volume down. If anything, the problem got worse. I was about to lose my mind with all of the noise (physiological, safety). Mr. Transportation was doing his best to calm me down. He deals with this nonsense on a near-daily basis for work, so his expectation is that people are too self-absorbed to consider how noise carries in hotels. He said, "If I obsessed about every noise other hotel guests make, I'd have gone mad years ago. You just do your best to let it go." My response was, "I understand kids wanting to have a good time when they are traveling together, but to me they are out of control and apparently under no adult supervision. I'm just going to go complain to the front desk. Maybe if there are enough complaints they'll do something about it."  

We did contact the front desk and were assured that we were not the first guests to complain. I popped in some ear plugs (not my favorite thing to do because it's not comfortable) and promptly fell asleep. I woke up at 2am to use the restroom, and when I took my ear plugs out, I could still hear the kids in the room next door. Mr. Transportation told me he hadn't been able to fall asleep because the noise had been constant. He had finally reached his limit. Again he tried asking the neighbors nicely to STFU. They laughed. So he went back to the front desk and (I'm guessing) produced a fairly unpleasant scene. Somehow the hotel staff was able to put an end to the party. 

It may have been my imagination, but I felt that the teenagers were vindictive and made as much noise as possible the following day. It could have been on my end: since I was tired and cranky about the situation, I was probably hyper-aware of every single sound. I was definitely feeling resentful, and I spent the day complaining to anyone who would listen about how thoughtless and self-absorbed the world is becoming because parents no longer teach their kids to consider how their actions impact the people around them. 

Then I saw a notification about a post I just made to the socials:

I had to laugh at how hypocritical I was being in choosing to complain about this situation. What about the fact of my noisy hotel stay is changeable? What about it is immutable? There is the matter of the lack of courtesy of fellow travelers. This is an immutable fact in the short-term. Many in our individualistic society are not raised to think about anyone but themselves. I do think this is changeable over the long-term, and I'd love to start a movement to get people to show more thoughtfulness and respect for those around them. I think simple steps would go a long way toward making the world a kinder, more wonderful place (esteem, social). However, that cannot be a priority for me in this era.

What is changeable? "Change the things you can change, forgive the ones you can't." I could either change the environment (move to a different hotel), or I could change my mindset (as Mr. Transportation suggested, I could let it go). Knowing that hotel options were limited and might have the same noise problems, I decided to let it go. I'm not sure if it was because of my more relaxed attitude toward the noise or if the kids were all so worn out after their late night the previous night, but the noise did not seem as outrageous the second evening.

Still, after this experience and the previous experience with the barking dog, I think I'm going to try sticking with vacation home rentals (AirBnB, vrbo) for the foreseeable future. But this makes me a little sad. Generally I enjoy the amenities (restaurant, gym, etc.) and the chance encounters with hotel guests and staff (social) that hotels offer. What do you think: have I missed seeing a better solution? Do you have a tale of hotel woes to share?