After checking into the hotel property at the front desk, you retire to your room after a long day. As part of the quest to relax, you might want to change your clothes — or not wear clothes at all, if that is your thing — but are you being watched?
Are You Being Watched? Stupid Tip of the Day
The windows of many hotel and resort properties tend to be treated so that looking in from the outside is difficult to impossible to do. For example, the windows of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas are not only tinted with a gold color; but their surfaces are also highly reflective to keep as much of the sun out of the rooms as possible so that heat does not build up in the rooms during the day while simultaneously affording privacy to guests…
…but not all hotel properties are equipped with those types of windows. While taking photographs of the exterior of the TWA Hotel in New York, I noticed that anyone could look right into the rooms — even on the ground floor — from virtually any vantage point and see just about everything inside of those rooms. I could even see which rooms were being serviced by members of the housekeeping staff.
I really could not understand why the windows of the TWA Hotel were not treated with some sort of tinting or a more reflective surface. The parts of the property where the rooms are located were constructed within the last decade; so this was not a retrofit of any kind.
Night time was no better. While I was attending a group meeting for dinner upstairs in the former Ambassadors Club of what was once the Trans World Flight Center, I looked out the window and realized that the rooms had no more privacy than during the day — unless the lights in the room were turned off.
Final Boarding Call
Rooms at hotel and resort properties are equipped with shades or curtains to ensure privacy. Use them.
You never know who is watching you…
All photographs ©2014 and ©2022 by Brian Cohen.
