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I miss the days of the hotel compendium like the one pictured here. Sure, it might be easier for hotels, cruise ships and the like to put information on a TV screen but the info displayed never seems to be as comprehensive as the old hotel compendium. Here on the SH Diana, it took me days to find things that I would have found far more quickly if I’d had an hotel compendium.
C for Coffee
I was a bit dismayed to find only a coffee maker in my room. It was a quite good coffee maker, one of those fancy ones that use pods. Before boarding in Cape Town, I saw a life-sized elephant made of recycled pods. (Note to self: suggest to the ship’s management that they could do worse than donate the used pods to the artist.) I was dismayed only because I don’t drink coffee.
K for Kettle
Next to the coffee maker was a pair of tiny macchiato cups. No mugs to be seen. If I could find hot water that is. No tea bags apart from camomile either. Go figure. No milk but plenty of sweetening options. And snacks. Then, on Day 3 of our 21-day voyage I spotted a well-camouflaged cupboard in which was a kettle and two perfectly sized mugs. If I’d been able to consult a hotel compendium, notice of the existence of said kettle would have been under ‘K’. You know, for ‘Kettle’.
B for Breakfast
In the middle of one night, as I was draping a face washer over the bright green light on the cabin’s telephone that had been bothering me in bed, I knocked over something that I later discovered was the room service breakfast menu. I hadn’t known it existed. In fact, just the previous evening over dinner with a Brit named Karen, we discussed the oddity that there was no breakfast on the 24-hour room service menu. The menu appears on Channel 2 of our TVs. ‘I’m sure you can order breakfast,’ I said to Karen, aware of a note of doubt in my voice. ‘At least during breakfast hours.’ And breakfast hours are generous. There’s Early Breakfast from 6.30-9.30, Breakfast from 7.30-9.30 and Late Breakfast from 9.30-11.00. That info you can access on Channel 1 that also displays the day’s activities program. When it’s working that is. Sometimes my Channel 1 screen was simply blank. That doesn’t happen with a hotel compendium. (I love that the room service breakfast menu asks if you have any ‘Special Wishes’.)
W for Water
When I asked at reception if the water that comes out of the bathroom tap was drinkable, the young Philippina looked horrified. ‘Oh no, housekeeping will refill the bottle in your room each day.’ Yes, I figured that. One whole litre a day. It’s a pretty stylish bottle though don’t you think? There are two refill stations: one at the 24-hour tea & coffee station where there’s still and sparkling water and juices. It’s two levels above my cabin. There’s another in the gym, as you might expect. I found those when I searched for them. If there’d been a hotel compendium their locations would have been found under ‘Water’.
P for Power
In my hotel room in Cape Town, I’d been searching for a power point I could use with my Australian power plug or one of the two adapters I had brought with me. And it took the hotel’s receptionist, when I went downstairs to ask, an age to get around to telling me there was a universal power point in the safe. Yep: IN the safe. If there’d been a hotel compendium, I’d have found the info under ‘Power’. Or maybe ‘Electricity’. (And no, they didn’t offer guests the use of adapters. I asked.)
The day’s activities are displayed on channel 1. Last night I discovered I can watch the ship’s expert lectures live on channel 22 (oh, for a compendium).
The first afternoon in my cabin, I tried to open the door to the balcony and couldn’t. Despite there being a diagram of sorts. I had to ask our steward to show me how to open it. Turns out you have to kind of pump the lever, not simply set it up to open and down for closed (per the diagram). Fine, I get that the doors need to be secure. We’re on a ship in the Southern Atlantic. Heading for Antarctica. But the technique for opening the door is far from a no-brainer. The diagram doesn’t explain properly, perhaps a hotel compendium would have.
A hotel compendium might have included the prices for massages and beauty treatments in the spa. It might have explained the three types of internet access. Instead, the channel on the TV that promised to explain the internet options take so long to shift to that page, I’m sure I can be forgiven for thinking it was stuck on the page that simply says ‘Stay Connected’. The opening hours for the gym, operating instructions for the aircon, laundry info (impressively free and 24hrs a day), all of this would be in a hotel compendium.
Oh, and just this minute, I found an ice bucket in my cabin. Now, I wonder where the ice machine is?
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