Excerpt from The Telegraph
It’s generally considered a nice thing when the walls come down in a relationship. But not literally. And not when it comes to the bathroom.
You won’t find open-plan bedroom-bathroom layouts in traditional, long-standing hotels, but for newer, edgier establishments, it has become something of a trend.
Whether that be a complete lack of partition between sleeping and bathing quarters, glass walls, or loos without doors, you can wave goodbye to your washroom privacy upon check-in - and who wants to do that?
Telegraph Travel’s review of The Lloyd Hotel and Cultural Embassy in Amsterdam, for example, mentions: “Most bathrooms are very open-plan - you may even find a curtainless shower simply sticking out of the wall.”
“I guess it could be sort of mysterious and sexy in the right circumstances, but it’s definitely only awkward when you’re sharing the room with your dad,” a guest at the Hôtel Le Germain in Toronto once told The New York Times, regarding the glass window that divided their room from the shower.
I can relate, having recently stayed with my father at a hotel in Cape Town, in a large (and beautiful) suite with an entirely open-plan bedroom-bathroom layout, and twin showers without curtains. The beds were separate, obviously, but when it came to shower time, one person was always banished to reception to sit in idle wait.
As for couples, some appear to have no issue taking their open-door policy away with them on holiday, while others find the prospect horrific.
Take the Sentido Aegean Pearl, a five-star hotel in Greece in which some of the en-suite bathrooms are open-plan. Comb through the (mostly very positive) TripAdvisor reviews and you’ll find plenty of mentions to this.
“Okay for close couples so wasn’t an issue for us but there was a severe lack of privacy,” one noted, while another simply said the layout caused “much amusement”.
Others didn’t quite see the funny side. “I don't really understand why this room design exists - surely no one would want a bathroom to be like that?" one guest commented. “The design is mad and made this unsuitable for me and my teenage daughter," another complained.
Click here to read complete article at The Telegraph.