Pet Peeve

I do not understand hotel in room entertainment decisions.  Hotel rooms have TV's, most now days are the flat screen models that come (standard) with HDMI inputs.  I have a small laptop computer with an HDMI jack.  I should be able to plug that into the TV, switch the input over, and watch my computer on the TV to play a game or stream Netflix or just browse the web from bed.  But often this is not possible because hotels have either blocked access to the ports or restricted the ability for the TV input to be switched over to them.

If many/most of the TV's made today lacked HDMI ports then this could be seen as saving them money, but that isn't the case.  These are specially setup TV's just for the hotels that are deliberately preventing me from using them in some way that makes them useful to me: basically the hotel is going out of its way to provide a worse service/product.  If the hotel provided some alternative that they charged for that might make sense, but they don't.  My computer entertainment options are not available through the hotel, so they are not making things worse to get a bit more money out of me, they are just making things worse. 

Mini-fridges that are not useful because they are stocked with crap I won't buy, and internet access that costs way too much are at least somewhat different.  These piss me off too, but at least there is a "hotel can get some money from this" side to it.  Just because I am not going to take a $7 beer out of that doesn't mean someone else won't. 

And of course, the more the hotel room costs the more likely it is you have to put up with this crap.  Super 8's are not the height of, well, anything, but free internet, free breakfast (mediocre, but free), useful fridge (when they have one, maybe, it's been a while), accessible TV's (again, maybe not anymore), and the ability to stay there with my dog make them a whole lot more customer oriented than any Hilton or Westin I've stayed at.

Of course, cheap hotels can also be a crap shoot.  In small towns where they are the only chain hotel they are often nicer, while in bigger/destination cities, they are much more likely to be nasty.