> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.readbeaufoy.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # I Love Hotels. I Just Wish They’d Leave Me Alone. - URL: https://www.readbeaufoy.com/i-love-hotels-i-just-wish-theyd-leave-me-alone/ - Published: 2026-10-02T20:56:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-05T21:00:58.000Z - Description: I’ve spent most of my working life in hotels. Which is probably why I’d quite like everyone in them to leave me alone. - Author: Stuart Beaufoy - Tags: Hotels, Travel, opinion, food I’ve spent most of my working life in hotels and most of my adult life travelling. This has ruined hotels for me. I can’t walk into one without immediately looking around and wondering whether somebody actually designed the place or simply drove a trolley around IKEA with a company credit card. I notice reception. I notice the lighting. I notice the staff. I notice whether somebody looks up when I walk through the door. I notice the music. I notice the smell. I notice things I really wish I didn’t notice. And despite spending my career in an industry supposedly dedicated to service, I’ve reached a slightly uncomfortable conclusion. Most of the time, I’d quite like everyone to leave me the fuck alone. There’s a belief in hotels that if some service is good, enormous amounts of service must be magnificent. It isn’t. I don’t need three people to welcome me between the front door and reception. I don’t need somebody to escort me to a lift that is clearly visible six feet away. And I definitely don’t need a detailed explanation of how the lights work. If I’m eating dinner, you also don’t need to ask me seven times whether everything is okay. If I’m enthusiastically eating it, drinking the wine and haven’t attempted to attract your attention, we’re probably getting along just fine. Great service isn’t about constantly reminding the guest that they’re receiving service. It’s about noticing. The best hospitality people have an almost supernatural ability to appear precisely when you need them and disappear when you don’t. They notice the empty glass. They realise you’re looking for the toilet before you have to ask. They recognise that you’ve just arrived after a miserable journey and probably don’t want a guided tour of the hotel’s sustainability initiatives. They know when to talk to you. And, crucially, they know when to bugger off. That, to me, is hospitality. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/10/aa/10aac3d5-b66a-4570-a3cb-3357ea28fd7a/content/images/2026/10/Dinner-by-Heston-1-1-1.png) **The QR code can fuck off too** Oddly, while I want less service, I want more people. I don’t want to check into a hotel on my phone. I don’t want a virtual receptionist. And I particularly don’t want to sit in a restaurant, scan a QR code, enter my email address, create a password, verify my existence and provide my credit-card details because I’d quite like another glass of Albariño. There’s a perfectly good piece of technology for ordering another drink. It’s called a waiter. Technology is fantastic when it removes something irritating. I’m delighted if I don’t have to fill in unnecessary forms. I’m delighted if my bill appears quickly. And anything that means I don’t have to stand in an airport queue deserves some sort of humanitarian award. But replacing a friendly human interaction with a QR code isn’t progress. It’s cost cutting with better branding. Hotels aren’t Amazon warehouses. Restaurants aren’t Argos. People go out partly because they want to interact with other human beings. Preferably pleasant ones. **Please stop designing the same hotel** Then there’s design. Walk into enough supposedly fashionable hotels and you begin to suspect there’s one enormous warehouse somewhere supplying the entire industry. Here is your velvet chair. Here is your industrial light fitting. Here is your slightly impractical side table. Here is a framed black-and-white photograph of something vaguely connected to the city you’re in. Congratulations. You are now a boutique hotel. I’m taking the piss, obviously. I’ve been guilty of some of it myself. But when I walk into somewhere new, I want to know where I am. Madrid should feel like Madrid. New York should feel like New York. A hotel in the Outer Hebrides shouldn’t look like a hotel in Manchester that shouldn’t look like a hotel in Copenhagen. Originality doesn’t require enormous amounts of money. It requires somebody to have had a thought. Which is surprisingly rare. **Travel has the same problem** I’ve travelled for most of my adult life, and I’ve become increasingly suspicious of things I’m told I’m supposed to admire. Take Sydney Harbour Bridge. I’m Australian, so I’m allowed to say this. It’s just a fucking bridge. A very impressive bridge, admittedly. But still a bridge. There are destinations we’re repeatedly told are extraordinary and others that quietly turn out to be extraordinary without anybody having given us adequate warning. I’ve just returned from three weeks travelling around Madrid, Zarautz, San Sebastián and Valencia. I could move to Valencia tomorrow. It’s beautiful without constantly looking over its shoulder to check whether you’ve noticed. San Sebastián is different. I first went about ten years ago and fell in love with it. The food is still extraordinary. Unfortunately, everyone else appears to have noticed. There are now people everywhere, seemingly competing to be the most irritating. And yet the food remains good enough that I’ll forgive it. Almost. At Casa Julián, I ate a txuleta tartare that I still get slightly excited thinking about. That’s what great travel does. Weeks later, something completely ordinary happens at home and suddenly you’re thinking about a plate of raw beef in the Basque Country. Not the famous landmark. Not the hotel lobby. Not the Instagram photograph. The beef. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/10/aa/10aac3d5-b66a-4570-a3cb-3357ea28fd7a/content/images/2026/10/Casa-Julian-1.png) Txuleta tartare, Casa Julián. **And then there are airlines** Flying is obviously part of travelling, although increasingly it feels like a punishment you have to complete before you’re allowed to begin your holiday. I flew Iberia recently. I’ve concluded that Iberia simply doesn’t care. About me. Possibly about you. Potentially about aviation. There’s probably something liberating about accepting this. Once you understand that nobody particularly cares whether you’re happy, you can lower your expectations accordingly and get on with your day. I have yet to reach this level of spiritual maturity. I’m working on it. **So why am I writing this?** Because after all these years of travelling and working in hospitality, I’ve realised I’m constantly judging the places I visit anyway. I might as well write it down. I don’t want to write exhaustive hotel reviews. I don’t particularly care whether the room has a trouser press. I want to know how somewhere makes me feel. Was the welcome genuine? Was dinner memorable? Did somebody actually think about the room? Was the expensive hotel worth the money? Did the cheap restaurant unexpectedly turn out to be brilliant? And perhaps most importantly: Would I spend my own money to go back? There will be hotels. There will be restaurants. There will be bars. There will undoubtedly be airports. There will be great service, terrible service, ridiculously expensive meals, cheap meals I’d cross a continent to eat again and famous attractions that turn out to be, well, bridges. But there’s another part of travel that matters more than any of them. The people you travel with. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/10/aa/10aac3d5-b66a-4570-a3cb-3357ea28fd7a/content/images/2026/10/Metro-Front-Bar-1.png) The right people can make an average destination unforgettable. The wrong people can make paradise feel like a hostage situation. I’m heading to Palermo on Thursday with a group that has all the ingredients required to make it a top-ten trip. I have no idea what I’ll think of Palermo. That’s rather the point. I’m not going there with a list entitled *The 17 Best Things To Do In Palermo*. I’m going to eat, drink, walk around, talk to people, probably get irritated by something completely insignificant and see what happens. Then I’ll tell you about it. Unless Palermo decides the appropriate way to order a Marsala is through a QR code. In which case there may be trouble.