Sorry, housekeeping, I’d rather my hotel room stay untouched

I’ve stayed in many fancy hotels and resorts. Still, I usually forget to anticipate the turn-down service sometimes offered at these places. This is when housekeeping pops into your room in the late afternoon or early evening to carry out a variety of tasks meant to make you feel pampered, comfortable and ready for bed.

Depending how posh your hotel is, this service could include folding back a corner of the bed linen, placing a chocolate or room-service breakfast menu on your pillow or side table, popping a pair of slippers beside your bed, switching on lamps, emptying bins, restocking beverages, rearranging your toiletries around the bathroom basin and folding your clothes into a neat pile.

On paper, it sounds wonderful. What’s there to complain about? For me, it’s a service so randomly offered by hotels that I often forget it might be on the cards. I must be finally learning, though. Recently, when staying at a tiny boutique hotel on Queensland’s Gold Coast, I remembered to scoop up my dirty clothes off the bed and floor and put them away before heading to dinner. Sure enough, upon return I could see there’d been some tidying – but at least no one had to handle my underwear and socks as I’d stashed them safely back in my suitcase. It was a proud moment.

Yet the truth is I’d prefer not to have these mystery visits (unless the hotel is on a mountaintop and someone’s popped in to leave a hot-water bottle between the sheets – that’s more than okay). I think of my hotel room as my sanctuary and my private space – but having housekeeping slip in to tidy up feels like the equivalent of breaking the fourth wall while watching a play. I am discombobulated every time.

During one European hotel stay, I silently battled with housekeeping – or was it a poltergeist? – over several days. I’d angle the bedside clock so I could read the time if I snapped awake with jetlag in the wee hours. Every day, I’d return to find the clock swivelled back into its original face-forward position.

The way around these annoyances is to keep housekeeping at bay. I usually hang the “Do Not Disturb” sign on my door as I bounce out for the day. For nothing makes me happier than returning to find everything just the way I left it – clothes on the floor included.