Essential Hotel Furniture

Fawlty Towers. There, we’ve said it. One of the downsides of getting into the UK hotel trade is that whenever anyone says ‘hotel’, the majority of our residents will immediately bring to mind the image of John Cleese giving his poor old car a damn good thrashing with a nearby branch. Needless to say, the actual hotel industry isn’t like that (mostly), and that anyone should consider getting into what can be a satisfying occupation. Obviously, all the rooms will need to be kitted out – and the following are without doubt hotel furniture essentials:

A bed. A rather obvious way to start off, it is nonetheless rather important that any hotel room has a bed, lest the guests run off offended, noting that if they’re going to sleep on a carpet, then they’ll damn well do it at John Lewis, thank you very much.

A decent sized desk. Probably the most common (and certainly the most ethically respectable) reason for getting a hotel room is that the poor occupant has been sent to the far reaches of the UK to attend a conference on the tedious way in which he makes a living (nuts and bolts salesman, anyone?). This means that at some point or another, they’ll need a desk on which to do some work/neck several glasses of scotch/combine the two.

A sofa/chair. Whilst it doesn’t have to be a fully reclining, bells-and-whistles haberdashery masterpiece (though if you have a goose that lays golden eggs, feel free), it’s fairly standard for hotel rooms to have a comfy chair of some kind, letting the residents relax without becoming bed dwellers like the grandparents in Willy Wonka.

A TV. OK, the jury’s out as to whether or not this is really furniture, but nonetheless, a hotel room without a TV is the modern equivalent of the stone ages. Even if it’s a smallish portable model, there’s no excuse for letting your visitors feel like they’re in a Charles Dickens novel.