Rolling Traveler

I’ve seen some odd hotel room designs over the years, mostly in London and the west of Ireland, where in an effort to keep up with the times, space has been reassigned to make the room en suite leaving an L-shaped room that is almost all bed, or a shelf has been jammed in at a weird angle up near the ceiling to accomodate a dangerously perched television. I understand the reasons behind these designs. Far stranger to me are the bizarre design choices I’ve seen in modern hotels that didn’t have to adapt or change existing structures, but still came up with something that is less than functional.

One such hotel is the Olivia Plaza Hotel in Barcelona, where my friend Lanny and I stayed for our recent trip. The room looked fine initially, but then we realized that this was a room for people who already know each other intimately, or who are blind. Call me prudish, but I find the idea of a who-needs-privacy-from-your-room-mate frosted glass-walled shower and water closet a little odd. That’s right: frosted glass shower and WC. And not just on the side facing the washbasin; the walls on both sides are glass, so the light can shine right through and leave very little to the imagination.

The bathroom as seen from the beds looked like this:

Everything about that hotel room is style over substance: the globe-shaped lights that hang down from the ceiling to waist height; the gravel-textured carpeting around the beds; the four-inch long bright blue standby mode light on the television that lights up the room after dark. However, it was the frosted glass walls that kept us wondering the most. What if we’d been co-workers? Do the family rooms also have an aquarium for a bathroom?
The design of the bathroom is supposed to be wheelchair accessible, but it was done with that designer’s sense of accessibility, rather than with the input of a wheelchair user. The toilet only has one handle beside it. The shower has no basin to block access, but has no shower chair or handles either, and since the sliding glass door have no grip on the inside, it was very difficult to open and close. Worse yet, when the shower is closed, the WC is open, because the same sliding glass door serves both! It you need to use the WC when someone’s showering, then you have to sit with the door open, and if you use the toilet after someone’s showered, then the water is running down the inside of the door onto the floor the whole time.
Bizarre as it is, it was all fine this time, because Lanny and I are the best of friends, and have no secrets, but I couldn’t help thinking it might be very off-putting for some people to come to their hotel room and discover just how much they were about to learn about their room-mate. I really wanted to see some of the other types of room to see if the same odd choices had been made in them.

The unusual height of the lights was also interesting, as they hung at waist height.

Verdict:
The Olivia Plaza Hotel is only semi-accessible if you’re staying on your own, as the bathroom isn’t fully thought through, and the design choices in the bathroom mean that you probably wouldn’t want to stay there unless you know your traveling partner really well, or are less prudish than me. I’d give it a Good for comfort and staff, a Getting There for wheelchair accessibility, and a big Say What? for design.

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