The impracticality of hotel rooms

What is it about hotel rooms that they have to be so impractical? From time immemorial I’ve complained about the lack of shelf space and hooks in bathrooms to put toiletries on and hang towels. Baths and showers have limited corner shelves for soap bars and shampoo bottles. That’s bathrooms; there’s other irritable quirks that almost inevitably come with a hotel booking....Here’s my assessment of four hotel rooms on a recent trip on both sides of the pond. First in Liberec, Czechia, our Hotel Fabrica supplied a nice handicapped accessible bathroom (one of us is disabled) with proper toilet height, grab bars and a no-lip walk-in shower. Europeans tend to have better accessible washrooms than their North American counterparts. But there was limited desk or shelf space to place suitcases and absolutely no night tables – what’s with that?! Moreover, there was no heat despite early October temperatures seeming like early November. Complaints to the management brought nothing. And it was only because a friend in this town of 100,000 near the Poland and German borders (the heart of Sudetenland, the Nazi Czech stronghold during World War II) offered a space heater that we kept warm for five nights…..Second was the InterCity Hotel in Erfurt Germany (pop. 200,000). A great location next to the Hauptbanhof (central train station) but the rooms were surprisingly cramped for such a major hotel (though it is Europe where small-scale suites often rule the day). We’d booked a handicapped accessible room and had been informed online this would be accommodated but when showing were up told flatly “there are no accessible rooms” - period. And two light weight hand and shower towels required regular refreshing for the four night stay…..Next: The Ibis chain hotel in Blackfriars, South Bank, London. This is a modern and “very cutesy” hotel with rock and roll themes for hip gen guests – I guess that means Baby Boomers on down. Signs throughout play on musical titles - Staying Alive, Wake Me Up, Don’t Stop the Music, Everybody’s Gone Surfin'. And there were even body soap and shampoo dispensers labelled Rock Your Body and Put You Hands Up In Your Hair. The only problem? Absolutely no shelving but a small coat rack and some wall hooks (photo). However, the accessible bathroom was great (Britain leads the way).....Finally, Montreal’s Hotel Chrome is a 1980s-era property that has never been refreshed. On the one hand this is good: the rooms were large and yes there was “shelf space” because, alas, of the old heavy wooden furniture. But the “accessible” bathroom was typically North American – a grab bar or two in the wrong places and a low toilet. Why or why are toilets so low when people with disabilities would normally want a higher toilet?