Hotel rooms with no bathrooms??

15 comments

1. I’d say it’s very very rare. Only maybe in really cheap dorm rooms or hostel type establishments !!

2. There are still some around – generally in smaller and less fancy hotels.

3. I stayed in two just this last week, one in London and one in Germany. I’m going to let you work out the reason for such things yourself.

4. You’re right about the date of filming. Around that time there were *plenty* of hotels without en suites, although it has massively declined since then with only the cheapest of accommodation still lacking such features.

5. Not as common as it used to be. Older or smaller places might charge a bit less for non-ensuite rooms. Newer or refurbished places often have all rooms as ensuite. In 1995 we got a very cheap rate at the slightly rundown Great Eastern next to Liverpool Street station. My bathroom was shared with a few other rooms. Since then it’s been refurbished. All the rooms are ensuite and it’s a very expensive boutique hotel.

6. I think quite a few guest houses and B&Bs will still have this. You just have to walk across the corridor. It’s usually cheaper than having an en-suite.
   B&Bs traditionally required you to leave the premises after breakfast and not return till late afternoon. I thought this was no longer a thing. But my friend staying in Scotland has to leave hers at 8am each morning!

7. I suspect all major hotels have refurbed and installed en-suites by now. I did stay at a large hotel in Piccadilly in 1995 which still had the bathrooms down the corridor, or rather toilets freely available but you had to ask a scary attendant to unlock a bathroom when you wanted it. I don’t think they had showers. That was rare by then, but common in the 70s.

   Nowadays only older student accommodation or guest houses don’t have en-suites. Personally I think it was better for students having to walk round their flats more often, getting social contact.

8. This seems obvious but I need to check.

   If you rent a hotel room, you always have access to a bathroom.

   Most now will be ensuite, meaning that the entrance to the bathroom is inside your room, and nobody else will have access to it.

   Sometimes the bathroom will be for your use only but not attached to your room, so you might have to cross a corridor.

   Then sometimes there’ll be shared bathrooms. This might be a bathroom like in a house where there’s a toilet and bath/shower in a room behind a locking door. Or it might be more communal with a row of toilets in cubicles and a row of showers in cubicles, like at a gym.

   At no point will anyone rent you a hotel room with no bathroom at all.

9. Not very common.

   You can still find them in older B&Bs who can’t remodel to include an ensuite but the bathroom will be nearby. I stayed in one back in 2017 where the (private) bathroom was across the corridor.

   En-suites and shared bathrooms used to be the norm but not anymore.

10. “hotel” is usually en-suite bathrooms but some older ones still exist

    There are still a lot of “BnB” (bed and breakfast) where there might be a common toilet as they are a large old house has many bedrooms

11. I stay in hotels all over the country every week for work and I’ve never stayed in one without a bathroom. It would have been unusual even in the 90s

12. I remember in the 90s, my parents and I stayed in a guest house, there were a bathroom and toilet on each floor , and just a sink in each hotel room for us to clean our teeth.

    This was a Bed and breakfast, and also did the evening meal included if you wanted it.

    Also I seem to remember this guest house you were required you to leave the premises after breakfast and not come back to late afternoon

13. I remember our first trip to the UK. We had booked a hotel room with “shower en suite”, assuming it was a bathroom with a shower instead of a bathtub.

    Nope. We came into the room, and in the middle of the (fairly large) room, right on the carpet, stood a blue plastic box looking like a porta potty. It was the shower. Which you had to pay for extra to get hot water. The toilet was a shared one, half down the stairs, and they had no toilet paper over the weekend.

14. I stayed in a hotel in central London a few years ago (maybe ten?) and it was cheap but it was like staying with an eccentric elderly uncle (decor, no ensuites, etc). I was there for a ‘do’ and had no money, hence staying there, but it was ODD. I kept expecting a doddery old chap in a smoking jacket to accost me on the landing to tell me about the time he met Noel Coward.

15. The ones that do not are basically converted houses and are used mainly by contractors and others who are not staying for tourism.

    It would be quite usual to have a house with kitchen, probably incl washing machine, and then toilet and bathroom, and bedrooms for people working away etc.

    But anywhere marketing itself for tourism will be severely disadvantaged if it does not have private bathrooms.