When you start staying in hotel rooms on a regular basis, it’s the small things that start to get your goat.

It might be the annoyance of having a chocolate put on your pillow every night. Or the reception staff not knowing your name, despite having stayed there 20 times before. With business travel being one of the most stressful things people do in their lives, it comes as no surprise that road warriors who really would prefer to be in their own bids find hotels ripe for gripes. Here are my own pet hotel hates.

The deposit
The first thing most business hotels do when you walk in is question your honesty. The receptionist doesn’t go as far as saying ‘Mr Smith, I do hope you’re not going to sneak a robe into your suitcase before you leave’ but it’s close. It’s the automatic ‘Can I have your credit card for any extras?’ that I dislike. Which other service industries are so distrustful?

Rip-off parking
I recently stayed in a hotel in San Francisco and paid almost US$50 to have the car valet parked. As I was walking out the following day I noticed the cost on a discreetly placed panel by the entrance. I took the car straight out of the hotel car park and parked it just around the corner in the public car park for just US$20 and noticed the hotel had its own section in the same car park. US$30 for two minutes’ work – now that’s the sort of job I would like.

Televisual torment
Did I ask you to put the television on? I don’t think so. Nothing annoys me more than walking into a hotel room to find the television blaring away with some canned music and a message welcoming me to the hotel. You then have to spend ten minutes trying to turn the damn thing off without accidentally clicking onto a pay channel. Bring back the hand-written note from the general manager I say.

Getting your laundry done
What is so difficult about getting a shirt pressed? If hotels must insist on you using their laundry service by refusing to stash irons and ironing boards inside room wardrobes, at least make sure it’s a workable alternative. If I have arrived at the hotel after a day of meetings and need a shirt washed and pressed for the next morning, where’s the difficulty?

The spreading minibar
Not content with forcing you to take out a second mortgage in order to enjoy a whisky miniature during a weak moment late at night, hotels have cottoned on to the idea of spreading the contents of the minibar around the room. Often this takes the form of a room tray packed with goodies and you’re never quite sure if they are free – the price list is often tucked away inside the minibar. The worst culprit is the expensive bottle of mineral water sitting by your bedside. I recently glugged a half litre bottle of water only to find out later it cost £5.

Light switches
Don’t get me wrong, I like mood lighting. I far prefer to walk into a room and see a tasteful mix of uplighters, downlighters, standard lamps and desk lamps. But what I can’t stand is getting into bed only to realise that I then have to do a tour of the room trying light switches in order to achieve darkness. One mother of all switches by the bedside would keep me happy.

Towel greenwashing
Every hotel now seems to sport those little notices in the bathroom headed ‘WE CARE’. Underneath, they go on about how washing towels damages the environment and that you should only leave your towels on the floor if you want them changed. Let’s get something straight – washing towels every day costs a hotel a lot of money. If hotels really wanted to be green, they could choose not install air conditioning and not leave the heating on 24 hours a day.

Buffet bacon
For me, a good bacon sandwich on white bread with lashings of HP is the only antidote to conference or client meeting-induced hangovers. So why can’t most hotels get it right? Every time I see one of those long silver warming trays with a pullover lid, my heart sinks. I know for certain that when I open it, inside will be lurking rashers that have been addled to inedibility.

Fixed check-in/out
If I don’t arrive at a hotel until 7pm and I have paid a hefty room rate, why should I have to leave the room by 10am? I have paid for a whole day not a half day. Hoteliers will moan about cleaning rotas but surely the cleaners would rather have their work spread throughout the day, not just crammed into the two hours between 10am and noon.