Strange British hotel practices

By Neil Steinberg

"For the past eight years, I’ve had a brochure from the Talland Bay Hotel, in Cornwall on the southern coast of England, floating around in the slurry of papers on my desk. Every so often, it’ll bob to the surface and I’ll notice it and think, “I’ve got to get that in the newspaper somehow.” But the opportunity is never right.

Now the opportunity is right. There is, as the editors say, a hook: Holiday Inn, the mid-market motel chain, has a branch in London’s fancy Kensington area, which flashed in the world press with a strange offer, a gimmick in response to the unusually chilly English weather– a “human bed-warming service” where, upon request, a hotel staff member will show up in your room, dressed “head to foot in an all-in-one sleeper suit” and pop into your bed for five minutes to warm the sheets for you.

This is daft, of course –never thinking about all the people who’ve slept in that bed is absolutely essential when staying in hotels. There is also a creepiness factor — what kind of hotel employee is going to be rolling around under your sheets, a buoyant housemaid or Gustav, the burly maintenance man? That would seem to matter."