Every hotel room seems to have one light switch nobody understands. You press it and nothing happens, then ten minutes later discover it controls a tiny lamp behind a chair on the other side of the room. Meanwhile the enormous glowing panel beside the bed apparently controls everything except the light currently keeping you awake.
The expensive rooms are often worse because somebody has tried to make the lighting feel clever. There are scenes, touch panels, master switches, reading lights, mood lights, and a bathroom light bright enough to signal aircraft. None of it is labelled in a way that helps when you arrive tired and just want to see inside your bag.
A hotel room is a terrible place for an interface that needs learning. Almost everyone using it is unfamiliar with the layout, probably carrying things, and only staying long enough to work it out immediately before leaving. This is exactly where boring labels and obvious physical switches should win. Bedside lights should switch off beside the bed. Bathroom lights should not illuminate the entire room through a glass wall.
I do not need a personalised lighting experience. I need one button that clearly turns everything off and does not also kill the socket charging my phone. Hotels have had decades to solve this, yet every stay still begins with the same little electrical escape room.
