In the US, there is a legal definition for a bedroom (must be for house selling purposes): it's a room with both a window and a closet.
In the UK, bedrooms - any rooms, even in new houses, do not have built in closets as part of the layout of the room. Tho many home-depot like shops will sell do-it-yourself build in cupboard solutions, these kinds of things are not part of the architectural imagination. C.S. Lewis Wardrobes, sans lion and witch, are still the norm.
What is equally distinct between North America and the UK, it seems, beyond ideas of what constitutes a bedroom, is the notion of the bed itself. Bed sizes are different. There is, for instance, no notion of a Queen size in the UK, whereas Kings are shorter in the UK than their NA equivalents. Box springs are rare: the mattress goes direct onto a platform (North Americans are most familiar with this approach when shopping for beds at IKEA).
These differences in size and support are as nothing to the myth perpetrated by hoteliers that two twin beds squished together can be advertized as a "king" bed in a room.
While not restricted to the UK, the UK must be the biggest perpetrator of this hotel slight of hand. A room advertised with a king size bed invariably means "two twins pushed together"
Word to the business traveler: if you're given the choice between a room with a double bed and a king, take the double. If traveling accompanied, even your partner will be grateful: that split in the middle where the twins come together to approximate a king, as you can guess, becomes experienced throughout the night as an increasingly vast chasm.
How did this bait and switch start? or does every native EU resident just understand that King at a hotel means squished twins, and it's just the naive north americans who take a King to mean a single unified mattress surface of king proportions?
The confusion is not mine alone: check out trip advisor for say any Radisson Edwardian in London, and look at the complaints about the faux king experience. Bottom line, it's just not comfortable. I was pleasantly shocked last summer when i had a gig in London requiring an overnight, where the hotel screwed up a room, and ended in bumping the accommodation up to their suite. It had an actual king in it. wow. the real thing: a vastness where you have to go on an expedition to get from one side to the other.
An advertised Kind that was a King. how odd.
In north america hotel travel, you may not get breakfast included with the room rate (uncivilized to be sure), but a bed is a bed and a king is a king and never the twins shall meet.
Posted by mc at March 13, 2006 10:56 AM