Posted on 11/06/2007 4:01:55 AM PST by libstripper
Before we address the gradual decline of the hotel-room bathtub, an important ethical disclosure: I’m biased. I’m a shower guy and couldn’t care less if I never see a bathtub in my hotel room again.
I can remember only two times in the past 20 years when I used a hotel tub: Four years ago, in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton Singapore, I hoisted myself into a tub strategically nestled under a window with a smashing view of the skyline. And then there was that time at the Halekulani resort in Waikiki when my then-wife-to-be and I, uh, well, uh.... Anyway, life on the road works in mysterious ways and it turns out that my bias is your bias.
“Less than 2 percent of people ever use a bathtub in a hotel room—except at a resort,” says hotel consultant Michael Matthews, whose 40-year career includes marketing and managerial stints at luxury properties from Hong Kong to Big Sur. “The only reason to take a bath in a hotel room is when there is someone else in there with you. Otherwise, business travelers prefer to have their room outfitted with a gutsy shower.”
I could hardly find a dissenting view among hoteliers or business travelers, which pretty much explains why hotels great and small are consigning tubs to the dustbin of history.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.aol.com ...
I try to avoid hotels lately what with the scourge of bedbugs coming from illegals and others coming into the country from the third world in droves.
I use to work at a hotel.
I wouldn’t sit in the tub.
Hotel rooms are leased public areas where people sleep, shower or bath, and...you know.
I only used the tub as a beer cooler. I’d put in two or three cases of loose can with all the ice the icemaker could crank out. Set for the weekend!
The “Sleep Inn” chain has oversized showers large enough to hold the entire Cal Tech Marching Band. They’re on to something.
I virtually never take a bath, only a shower, but recently stayed a couple of days in a nice hotel and soaked in a very hot bath, with some scented oil, each morning.
Used muscles that had not been used in toooo long! (hiking)
I was glad of that tub, let me tell ya.
Tubs are for women. They’re a big waste of water and you never get the scum off.
Both of my children were products of a soaking tub... and a little wine... and a nice candle. Taking a bath to clean up is stupid. Can’t get the scum water off yourself, unless you have “a little help :>).
The Slippery Menace
by Jules Varwig
How many more must die in the cold porcelain of the household bathtub before we come to our collective senses? This all too common appliance is a proven killer. Unregulated bathtubs cause over 200,00 injuries every year. There are over 100 drownings and 70 people cooked to death in scalding bathwater each and every year. Add the suicides, falls, and deliberate murders that take place in tubs, and the death toll mounts. Sadly, children comprise 75% of the fatalities.
Many European nations have long recognized the risk inherent in bathtubs and have reduced the use of them. Yet in the United States, the bathing culture is rampant, and leads to death and suffering on a gigantic scale. There are those who claim that bath tub use is justified under certain circumstances. Some claim that bathtubs are necessary for cleanliness. Is personal vanity more important to you than a child’s safety?
Recreation is often espoused as a legitimate use of the bathtub but can be disregarded out of hand. No brief thrill is worth the cost of maintaining one of these deadly instruments of destruction in your home. Research shows that the chances of drowning or being boiled in your bathtub are greater than the chances of inducing a supermodel of the opposite sex to share it with you.
Steps should be taken at once to register tubs. Our government at present don’t even know for sure how many of these killer devices exist! Simply incorporating a few questions into the upcoming census would help authorities to determine the size of regulatory agency needed to enforce license requirements.
Many bathtubs hold up to 18 inches of water. The variety known as the “spa” or “hot tub” may hold even more, and has been implicated in cases of date rape. Some of these assault tubs can have as much as 24 inches of water and various automatic jets, whirlpools, and heaters which make them attractive to the criminal bather. Our legislature should take steps to limit all new bathtubs to holding 3 inches of water. This should reduce the chances of mass drowning significantly.
Of course, children make up the overwhelming number of bathtub victims. Even if you don’t own a bathtub, your child’s friends may have parents who are irresponsible bathers. The common sense solution is for people to use faucet locks. Faucet locks can be easily mandated by government, enforced by a new agency set up specifically with tub safety in mind, and subject to in-home inspections at households with registered bathtubs.
Regardless of any “right” claimed by the pro-bathing crowd, (a right which is never mentioned in the Constitution) precedents have already been established for bathroom fixture regulation. The Supreme Court has so far refused to hear any cases involving environmentally friendly commodes, thereby pointing out the foolishness of those who say that the government requirement of a toilet that doesn’t work is some kind of tyranny. We should continue to educate these malcontents and inform their children of the stubborn and selfish ways of their parents.
How can you get involved in insuring your children’s safety? The most important thing you can do is to eliminate your bathtub immediately. Your tub is not “necessary” to your family’s well being, and in fact is more likely to kill or injure a member of your family or a friend, than it is to drown a burglar. The benefits of eliminating your tub will be immediate and noticeable. There will be a certain air about you that says, “ I did away with my bathtub and I’m safer for it.” Lobby your legislators to immediately invoke new laws to insure your safety from tubs. Give them money if you have to. Write nasty letters, stage protests, and organize anti-bathing individuals to stand around in legislative chambers. You WILL be noticed. Finally, join Bathtub Sanity, the only organization dedicated to your safety from this menace. At B.S. we are constantly involved in political action, research, and public education. We even maintain a facility containing various models of assault tubs, which our staff researches and tests at considerable personal danger.
Your children deserve to be safe, no matter the inconvenience or hardship. They cry out for your protection. Would you deny them?
www.american-partisan.com
Interesting bathrooms have long been a big hotel concern. On luxury cruise ships of yore, bathtubs had hot, cold, and salt water for baths.
In the future, next to the elaborate shower, there might be a drying tube, like a blow dryer for the whole body, long used in science fiction movies, or a partial tube just for the hair of the head.
Even the mundane bidet is very easy to get used to.
A more high tech, but invisible improvement could be the use of the new “self cleaning glass”, using nanotechnology, for bathroom mirrors. Such glass doesn’t steam. Integrated into bathroom ceramics, an exposure to UV light would clean them, since contamination and liquids wouldn’t stick.
Medical diagnostic tools could also impress guests. Not just bathroom scales integrated into the floor, but body fat index measurement, finger blood pressure, and even a one-use disposable thermometer.
What probably won’t make it into bathrooms are saunas and steam rooms, for liability reasons.
The Japanese are the only people who’ve really figured out how to use a bath tub. They take a big tub and fill it with hot water. Then they clean and rinse themselves completely outside of the tub and only get into it after they’re cleaned and rinsed to soak.
“First you put your @ss in the water. Then you use that water to wash your face.”
He was a “shower-only” kind of guy.
A couple of the hotels I visited in Ireland in September had large showers like that. Multiple shower heads, glass panels, etc.
I hate tubs too (and I am a woman) — you never get the scum off, indeed.
We call that *hot
tubbing* here in Texas.
And the #1 reason against tubs:
Ever tried to have sex in a standard bathtub?
Yes, that’s the biggest problem with shower stalls - there’s nowhere to get out of the shower stream while you soap up and what not.
I’ve only used a tub in a hotel once that I can remember, at the end of a very cold and wet ride on my motorcycle, at which point I was pretty much hypothermic. Got my core temperature back up in no time.
He had it right.
A little off subject, but if you EVER use a hotel room that doesn’t have plastic glasses, watch this:
“In a hidden camera investigation, watch how big chain hotels like Ritz-Carlton, Renaissance, Sheraton, Embassy Suites and Holiday Inn wash — or don’t wash — guest room glasses”
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=7714
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