Hotel Offers Scented Alarm Clocks

Holiday Inn Express is taking the idea of “wake-up calls” to a whole new level, literally through your nose. The hotel chain just rolled out scent-based alarm clocks in select rooms. Instead of a buzzer or a phone call, you can now wake up to the smell of fresh-brewed coffee, sizzling bacon, or even blueberry muffins drifting across the pillow. Forget room service, this is straight-up breakfast-in-bed for your senses.

Of course, once the novelty wears off, we all know there are a few other “hotel upgrades” we’d really like to see.

For starters, how about a keycard that works the first time we slide it in? After a ten-minute elevator ride to the 17th floor, nothing makes you question your life choices like standing in a hallway swiping the card ten different ways like you’re cracking a safe.

Then there’s the soap situation. Why is every bar of hotel soap the size of a Chiclet? By the second shower, it’s slipped down the drain, or worse. Let’s just say no one wants to explain how the “courtesy bar” pulled a Houdini act.

And housekeepers, bless their hearts, maybe wait until the sun is up before the knock-knock-“Housekeeping!” routine. Some of us aren’t trying to set Olympic records for fastest pajama scramble.

Finally, let’s address the real enemy: one-ply toilet paper. Nothing ruins a vacation like feeling you’re wiping with tree bark. Two-ply should be the law of the land.

Scented wake-ups are cool. But give us working keycards, grown-up soap, and toilet paper with dignity, and then we’ll really be living the suite life.

Doug O’Brien