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Air Conned: How hotel room thermostats are useless.

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Air Conned: How hotel room thermostats are useless.

The Wall Street Journal published an article on January 25th confirming the suspicions that many frequent hotel guests have always wondered…does the thermostat on the wall actually work? NO! In the video below Scott McCartney the author of the article is interviewed and discusses various techniques hotels use to limit the variance of an in room thermostat, and then goes on to tell us about some blogs that have posted the codes to bypass them.

No you aren’t going through the change. Your hotel is just saving some.

per the WSJ

The New York Hilton has a system that keeps unoccupied rooms at 78 degrees and then automatically sets the thermostat to 74 when a guest checks in. The system cools the room down in about 5 minutes. Companywide, new temperature control systems have helped Hilton reduce energy use by 14% since 2009

I’ll also point out that you can read the published article by finding Scott on Twitter. Most times articles that are limited to subscription via the main site are accessible using a twitter link. Just an FYI. In the published article he mentions,

Hotels are retrofitting wireless wall thermostats and door switches in some rooms now that devices are cheaper to buy. The advantage is that they can be centrally controlled. Guests may still fiddle with old knobs on the PTAC units, but it won’t get cooler or warmer. “We can read the room’s temperature and comfort, find out when you come, find out when you go and we can control it,” Mr. Gaines says.

So you can hit that button as much you want, but unless you override it and go into VIP mode…it ain’t changing. Reminds me of an elevator. Let’s be honest, we’ve all hit the elevator button multiple times knowing full well that it doesn’t come any faster. Something does feel good about that, right?

Interested in those blogs? Going into VIP mode? You can find them here. I also ran across an article written by Gary Leff a few years back.

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

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1 Comment

  • dot cahill February 12, 2017

    so true.. I call engineering as soon as i check in to do the VIP override!!Some of them look at me as if i have 2 heads then i say call your boss or the GM..or i will need a large fan pronto!!! as i will not pay to sweat all nite as the air goes off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!nuts at hundreds of $$$ per nite esp in disney or the hilton chicago……………………………

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