Back when there was a Redbury Hotel in LA — in Hollywood, on Vine, across the street from Capitol Records, in the building which is now the h Club Los Angeles — they had a few types of guest rooms, which were priced differently, as is the case with most hotels. It wasn’t a size thing for the LA Redbury (they have 2 locations now — in New York and Miami); it was about noise — which I discovered, unfortunately, after my first stay. The cheapest rooms overlooked the building’s atrium, which housed a bar that was loud — and open (and loud) until the early morning hours. The next cheapest were on the side of the hotel that was adjacent to a nightclub. Also loud. Also open until the wee morning hours. I stayed at the Redbury many times — and happily so — but I never stayed in a room on the atrium ever again.

When you book a hotel room, there is generally an opportunity to make a special request. I always ask for a quiet room, indicating that — to me — this means far away from the elevator (less likely to encounter people who don’t use indoor voices in hotel corridors) and a higher floor. That is, unless there is a rooftop bar. Then I request a floor that’s not too close to the street, but still far away enough from the roof to avoid the sound of alcohol-induced conversation and thumping bass beats permeating my room.

No one hangs out at the Radisson hotel bar or in the Courtyard lobby.

The thing about most rooftop bars — and, it seems with more frequency, other hotel common spaces — is that they aren’t necessarily there for the hotel guests; they’re there for other revenue streams — the club goer, brunch eater, self-employed laptop slave (in descending order of reliability as a revenue stream). No one hangs out at the Radisson hotel bar or in the Courtyard lobby, but the Ace Hotel New York and the Freehand Los Angeles bars and lobbies, for example, are teeming with folks who aren’t holding room keys. It’s equal parts the Starbucks (“the world is your living room") and the lifestyle brand phenomena; the cool kids that gather are drawn to what they believe these brands represent and, in doing so, they draw others in as well.

The problem is that, while I don’t begrudge hotels their pursuit of new revenue streams, it often means that the needs of actual hotel guests are placed relatively low on their list of priorities. I stayed in a hotel in DC* that billed itself as being devoted to wellness — except that wellness did not include sleeping, as evidenced by the lack of sound proofing in the guest rooms and the music from an event at the hotel — to which guests were not invited. I stayed in a hotel in New York where I had to fight for elbow room during check in because the elevator queue for the rooftop bar was so long that revelers were snaked through the lobby. In other hotels, it’s simply been a case of not being able to get a stool at the bar or a table for dinner.

At the aforementioned Ace in New York, they’ve made an effort to acknowledge the importance of prioritizing hotel guests by setting aside a space for guests in their always over crowded lobby. And when I checked in to both the Wythe in Brooklyn and the NoMad Los Angeles recently, they made a point of inviting me to events that would be happening during my stay.

Sure, be creative in your pursuit of revenue and in your efforts to build your brand, but don’t forget that you’re a hotel only as long as guests continue to check in. The best examples I’ve seen of juggling the needs of hotel guests with the desire to draw in others as well have been the 21C (I’ve stayed at their locations in Louisville and Nashville), the Gladstone in Toronto, and my current favorite hotel in the world, At the Chapel (which bills itself as a “restaurant with rooms”). With in-house art exhibits and events that heighten versus interfere with the experience of hotel guests, they’ve managed to find the right balance.

*I refrain from shitting on the hotels in which I’ve stayed by naming them; this ain’t Yelp.