Hotels blow it with their HVAC

I've never met a hotel HVAC system that I liked. HVAC is short for heating, ventilating and air conditioning in case you were wondering.

Most motels have those units on an outside wall that offers heating or cooling with 3 fan speeds: loud, louder and 747 taking off. Unfortunately if you try using any of these settings and try to sleep you will soon get frustrated and turn it off. In summer this has the effect of becoming stiflingly hot in an hour or two. In winter, it soon becomes frigid.

Hotels generally have the units in the ceiling which are quieter but also seem incapable of regulating the temperature.

In April, we spent a couple of nights in the Delta Centre-ville in Montreal with the family. As hotels go, it was fine, but, like all hotels, the heating and air conditioning system was lacking. The Delta was better than most in that it didn't feature one of those horrible, through the wall systems that make so much noise but, over 3 days and 2 nights, I never did find a comfortable temperature despite flipping the thermostat between 18 and 24 degrees C. Either it was too cool with the fan on or too hot with it off.

I spent 8 nights at a new Holiday Inn Express in Antwerp (Antwerpen ou Anvers) Belgium two weeks ago and had the same problem so I resorted to leaving the window open. However the traffic and pedestrian noise (polite term for drunks on the sidewalk) was so irritating that I had to close the window and try just the HVAC, but again, no joy in finding a temperature below 24 degrees celsius. To add to the irritation, in Europe you have to put your room key in a slot by the door to turn on the lights and HVAC, so the moment you leave your room, the HVAC shuts off. Now presumably, you could insert some other piece of plastic, like a maxed-out credit card in the slot and leave it there but I didn't think of it at the time.

Thinking more about it, I realize that hotel rooms are like camping in a tent. You are either too hot or too cold, but the sheets, mattresses and towels are usually better.