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Okay serious question about why adjoining hotel rooms are so hard to get.  I’m sure that there’s a reason for it, but I’m hoping someone perhaps in the hotel or hospitality industry can help me understand why it seems adjoining rooms in hotels seems like something mythical

A little bit of background on why we prefer adjoining hotel rooms

When I talk about adjoining hotel rooms, what I mean are two separate rooms that have a door in between them as well.  Sometimes I hear these called connecting hotel rooms as well.  Having the door between the two hotel adjoining rooms means that even though you’re paying for two hotel rooms, you can essentially treat this as one big hotel room

adjoining-hotel-rooms-door

I know that many travelers AVOID having adjoining hotel rooms, because the perception (and probably the reality) is that the door directly to another room is not as soundproof as a wall would be, so you are more able to hear noise from the other rooms.

Our kids are getting older, but I’m not sure they are quite ready to stay in a hotel room by themselves, so getting adjoining hotel rooms for us means the difference between getting to share a bed with my wife and sharing a bed with a wiggly 8 year old.

Finding if a hotel has adjoining hotel rooms

It’s hard to find out what hotels have adjoining hotel rooms – usually on their hotel website whether or not a hotel has adjoining or connecting hotel rooms is not mentioned.  Because adjoining hotel rooms are so important to our family, I will sometimes call or tweet out to several hotels in the area we’re looking at  to see if the hotel even HAS adjoining rooms

(SEE ALSO: List of airline and hotel Twitter contacts)

One trend I’ve noticed in newer hotels is that often the adjoining hotel rooms are a regular room and then an accessible (ADA complaint) room.  I guess that makes sense since one of the use cases for adjoining rooms is traveling with someone that might need help – either in a wheelchair or otherwise needing an accessible room.  Reaching out to the hotel can often tell you which TYPES of rooms are adjoining (meaning king bed / 2 double beds / etc), so you can reserve the right kind of rooms (though with points reservations, you often don’t get that choice)

How to get adjoining hotel rooms

So once I figure out which hotels have adjoining hotel rooms, then it’s a matter of putting in my request.  I usually put that into my “additional requests” field on the reservation.  Of course, as hotels so often remind me, this is only a “request” and is not “guaranteed”.

I usually also call the hotel room the day before and/or the day after just to see if it’s possible.

Why is getting adjoining hotel rooms so hard?

We’ve struck out the last several times trying to get adjoining rooms at hotels.  I understand that sometimes the rooms that are adjoining are not always going to be available – either by other people requesting adjoining rooms, or just full with single groups that happen to be in the rooms that are adjoining.

But it just feels like it shouldn’t be that hard?!?  I am looking for anyone that has any hotel front desk experience as to how rooms are assigned.  I get that sometimes it won’t happen, but my gut says that it should be possible more often than not.  But I admit that I am clueless as to how hotel rooms get assigned.  Is it not possible to “block” off some rooms if I call up the night before or morning of?  Is it a factor of check-in time?  Like if I check in at 3pm I have a better chance than if I check in at 9pm?

Do you know any tricks for getting adjoining hotel rooms?  Leave your insight in the comments


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