Hotels and requesting feather free rooms

Something that I am noticing happening more and is when you request there be no feathers in your hotel room, hotels tell you that everything is good only for me to get into your room and check the pillows and find out there are feather pillows on the bed.

We have been a regular at the Residence Inn by Marriott and quite often even after confirming with the front desk at check in that the room is feather free, we get into our room and at least half of the pillows have feathers. It is rather frustrating given that we are not just walking into a hotel and checking for a room, we have made a reservation quite a few days before.

This last time was during a work trip, and we asked at the front desk if everything was good, and they again confirmed it was, and again the feather room didn’t happen, so I quickly phoned down, and we ended up being moved to another room. It is so frustrating that this keeps happening because you think a little request such as no feather pillows would be something that would be easily accommodated.

In March, we travelled to Las Vegas for a vacation and when we were checking into the hotel, we confirmed that our room was feather free and the reply was something that amazed me. The staff let us know that the entire hotel was feather free, so that shouldn't be an issue at all. Even guests that request feather pillows, they are declined, so that the hotel remains feather free. It was such a nice experience to have that happen. The hotel that we stayed at in Las Vegas was The Linq Hotel and Casino, right on the strip.

We did have a similar experience in a hotel in downtown Toronto, and it was the Sheraton Centre, and they have entire floors that are feather free, so that is also nice. It is something that I think more hotels should try and do because having either the entire hotel or at least some floors that don’t have feather pillows in any of the rooms makes it a nice experience for those that cannot breathe due to feathers.

So hopefully hotels will learn that to keep guests returning to their hotels you have to ensure that the guests have a good experience from the moment they enter the hotel through to the time they check out.  If someone has any ideas how we can get more hotels to think about having designated feather free rooms, let’s start a discussion about this.