Off-the-rails hotels just don't wash with guests

I'm in  Washington, where there is a record heatwave. I'm in a hotel so wonderful I want to sell up everything and live here for the rest of my life. Well, perhaps not on a very hot July 4.

After playing tourist all day, one is in need of a shower, of course. No problem in this hotel, plenty of water, great pressure.

No, the problem is the towels or, more precisely, the towel rails or, even more precisely, the lack of them. Our beautiful bathroom has everything, but only one little mimsy towel rail and it's not near the shower. Which means that there is no towel nearby when you step out of the shower, and when you come to your third shower for the day all the towels are wet.

This is not the only guilty hotel. I travel quite a lot for pleasure in my old age and stay in everything from youth hostels to three-star and four-star hotels, taking in B&Bs and village inns on the way, anywhere from Morocco to Hong Kong to the United States. It's the same problem everywhere.

In Australia, we aren't perfect either. We've all seen those little signs in the bathrooms in motels in Dubbo or Canowindra or Nundle that say something like, ''In an effort to save water, the environment, the world, please reuse your towel. If you hang it up we won't take it away and waste water on washing it.'' Gladly, but where's the blinking towel rail?

Of course, there are other bathroom problems. I'm seriously thinking of setting up a new rating system for hotels based on bathrooms. The criteria would include water pressure, water temperature, taps.

Now there's a subject. We have all come across these new trendy minimalist bathrooms where one is confronted by two silver discs. Eventually, as your restaurant reservation slips away, you work out one disc is turned clock or anti to get hot or cold, and the other ditto to get water pressure. We won't even speak about the geysers in Britain that require flicking a switch, stamping on the ground while facing Scotland and manipulating a lever that would run a steam engine.

And don't start me on those ridiculous showers that are silver snakes that fall off the wall, and you don't know which button to press to make the water come out of the shower head instead of the bath tap.

But let's start simply. It doesn't cost much to pop down to the ubiquitous hardware and get a towel rail.

Even I can do that. And if I do sell up my assets and move in here, that's exactly what I'll do.

Source: Heckler, Sydney Morning Herald daily guest columnist, 9 July 2012