Hotels & Howlers
This is an emotive and tricky topic guaranteed to ruffle a few parental feathers methinks. The reason I ask is just recently some friends found themselves in a bit of sticky situation. They’d booked into a nice hotel for a week’s break. The hotel wasn't specifically for families or adult only it was a nice hotel and they were going off season. As they are sans les enfants they weren’t bound by school holidays and wanted to get away for a rest.
By night number 3 the family next door had arrived and with them an ankle-biter of indeterminate age but probably in the low smalls and here’s what transpired. Each morning about 3.00amish the screaming began, not for long maybe 30 seconds most, then it would stop and my friends would fall back to sleep. Then perhaps fifteen minutes later the screaming would begin again and they’d be woken again. This continued for about 5 sessions.
The screaming also occurred around 6.30pmish and sometimes in the morning around 8.00am. So what do you do?
On the one hand my friends needed a holiday and a rest so why should they have to suffer being continually woken by a wee bairn screaming his lungs off. Should the management of the hotel have a specific “family floor” allocated. And on the other hand what if you’re a family and your crew all sleep soundly, you run the risk of waking not just a couple of adults but a whole bunch of children too.
And what if the poor kidlet is teething, having nightmares, has colic and is not feeling very well – not exactly their fault. Plus I am sure the parents of the howler weren’t getting much rest either. Although one can argue that just goes with the territory.
My friends were torn, compassionate to feel sorry for the wee screamer and his/her parents, but really wanting to catch up on some ZZZZs.
What would you have done? Asked to move to another room? Bang loudly on the wall every time it started, shouting “keep it down in there”? Complained to hotel management and asked for a refund? Kept your fingers crossed that Calpol was being administered and the noise abated? Or something else?
In the end, they did nothing, they are fortunate enough to have four weeks or so of vacation so chalked it up to bad luck but I’d be very interested to hear what parents and non-parentals think about this and what advice they might have given my friends.
Look Gorgeous, Feel Fabulous – Sophie