Most travellers spend an evening choosing a hotel and ten seconds choosing the room. The booking engine offers a category that sounds pleasant, and the actual room is decided by whoever allocates rooms shortly before you arrive. Yet two rooms at the same rate can differ more than two hotels do: one looks over a garden, the other over the yard where the laundry van pulls in at six; one sits at the quiet end of the corridor, the other beside the lift. The hotel's name gets you through the door. The room decides how you sleep.
Read the building before the brochure
Start with a map. The satellite view shows which side of a hotel faces the street and which a courtyard or garden, and whether a railway, a nightlife strip or a loading bay lies behind it. A higher floor usually means less traffic noise and more light, but only if nothing sits above you: a rooftop bar or the air conditioning plant can undo the advantage. In old townhouses the top floor often held the servants' rooms, which may still be smaller, under sloping ceilings.
At The Goring in London the choice is the side of the building. The Garden Suites and garden-facing rooms look over the hotel's private lawn rather than onto Beeston Place; they are quieter and greener, and in May the garden is in full flower. A private garden is rare this close to Victoria station, which is why these rooms are worth asking for. Read what comes with a category, too: the Royal Suite, where the Middletons stayed in 2011, has a balcony over the gardens and includes parking and airport transfers both ways.
Where the noise comes from
Hotel noise rarely comes from the neighbours. It comes from machinery and busy corners, and much of it can be avoided with one sentence to the reservations desk. The usual sources:
- Lifts and lift lobbies, where doors, chimes and late arrivals meet.
- Linen stores and service stations on the corridor, opened early.
- Connecting doors, which carry more sound than a solid wall.
- Bars, terraces and ballrooms, above all on wedding weekends.
- Service yards, where deliveries and bin collections start before breakfast.
- The main entrance, where cars come and go until late.
None of this appears in a room description, but a good reservations team knows which rooms sit beside the lift or above the kitchen. A precise request, a quiet room away from the lift and the bar, is easier to meet than a vague one.
Main house, garden or annex
Many hotels are really several buildings, and the choice between them matters more than the category name. The main house has the history and the short walk to breakfast; garden rooms and annexes are often quieter and more private.
Kasbah Tamadot, in the High Atlas an hour from Marrakech, has three families of rooms: the original rooms and suites in the main building, with the courtyards and the older character; ten Berber tents in the gardens, several with a private hot tub; and six riads, bookable since September 2024, each pairing a two-bedroom pool suite with a tented suite on the roof facing Toubkal. Couples should ask for a tent with a hot tub, families and groups for a riad, with three bedrooms, a private pool and that roof terrace.
Small houses divide too. Corral del Rey in Seville has seventeen rooms and suites in three seventeenth century houses, six around the original patio of the main house and eleven in two annexes across the lane, so ask which building yours is in. For the Giralda from your own terrace, book the Penthouse Suite or the Grand Pool Terrace, each with a private roof terrace and plunge pool facing the cathedral. Otherwise a Junior Suite gives more space than a standard room, and the shared roof mirador, with the Giralda in view, is open to every guest.
Corner rooms, and views you can visit
Corner rooms are a regulars' favourite: windows on two sides, more light, often more space. Where they form a category of their own, they can be booked rather than hoped for.
Rosewood Vienna occupies three nineteenth century buildings on Petersplatz. More room than the standard categories comes with the corner Junior Suites and the three Signature Houses, named Treichl, Hoffmann and Graben. The view is one you need not sleep with. THE1835, the rooftop bar, looks across the spires of the old town to St Stephen's Cathedral, and breakfast is served under the eaves on the sixth floor, where early risers get the window tables facing the dome of St Peter's Church. Spend on what you use all day, and visit the view at sunset.
How to ask the reservations desk
Write to the hotel's own reservations address, not the platform you booked through, with the booking reference in the subject line. Keep it short, specific and honest about why it matters:
We arrive on 14 May for two nights and would be grateful for a room on the garden side, on a higher floor and away from the lift, as one of us sleeps lightly and it is our anniversary. If that means a higher category, please tell us the difference before changing anything.
The reason gives the team something to work with, the order of the wishes tells them what to drop first, and asking about the difference keeps the tone friendly. Send it a week before arrival, with a short reminder two or three days ahead, since many hotels allocate rooms only in the final days. And know where a request ends: a terrace, a view or a private pool that defines the trip belongs in the booked category.
When an upgrade request is fair
Asking costs nothing, but timing decides the answer. A request is fair when the hotel is not full, on a weekday or in the shoulder season, on a longer stay, for a real occasion mentioned once, and from guests who booked directly or return. It is pointless on the nights everyone wants: Semana Santa and the Feria de Abril fill Seville and Corral del Rey alike. The best moment is often check-in, with a concrete question: is a garden-side room free tonight, and what would it cost? If not, accept it with good grace. Hotels remember guests who ask well.
