Hotel Room Power
Posted: December 10, 2012 | Categories: Travel
I arrived in Spain on Sunday, November 11th. I was tired (don’t sleep well on planes), stinky and trying to stay awake (I failed – ended up sleeping for like an hour after I got settled into my room). I was staying at the Auditorium Madrid, supposedly the largest hotel in Europe (it was pretty big) and my room was very, very far from the lobby.
When I walked in my room, I set about putting all of my stuff away and quickly noticed that none of the lights in my hotel room worked. ‘Crap’ I said to myself privately (I was alone, so I’m not sure why I felt the need to say it to myself privately, but I did) what was I going to do. I was tired and stinky and didn’t want to deal with switching rooms or waiting for my electricity to be turned back on.
Now, I need to tell you that when I walked in the room, I noticed this little white plastic thing mounted on the wall just inside the door. It had a slot on top, just about the perfect size for me to stick my hotel key in (credit card size I probably should have said). I didn’t want to stick my key in the slot, because I thought it (whatever it was) could somehow wipe my key, and I didn’t want to walk all the way back to the front desk (it was a long, long way away).
So, after checking everything I could think of in the room in an effort to figure out why nothing worked, I remembered that little slot. What the heck, what’s the worse that could happen? I stuck my room key in the slot and suddenly everything in my room started to work (the electricity came back on). Amazing!
I asked a German colleague about this and apparently it’s standard across Europe (it had been quite a while since I’d been in Europe apparently (about 10 years)), you have to stick your key in the slot to enable electricity. None of that stuff like we have in the US where there’s a motion sensor in the room to determine whether the air conditioning should be running or the Disney Hotel thing of disabling the air conditioning when the door’s not dead-bolted. Nope, in Europe, nothing electrical works unless you’re room key is in that slot.
So, what do you do when you want the air conditioning (or heat) running while you’re out of the room? Or, how do you charge a smartphone while you’re out of the room? Better ask for two room keys when you check into a European hotel.
How’s this going to work when you’re able to use your smartphone as your room key?
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