Hotels Are Removing Bathroom Doors and Guests Are Revolting

Last month I wrote a post on 19 Things That Drive Me Nuts About Staying in Hotels. One of my gripes was “Bathrooms With No Doors. An open-concept bathroom is not luxury. It’s a design crime, especially if you’re traveling with someone.” Unfortunately, it seems this issue has gotten out of hand as more hotels try to cut costs, doing away with this once-common fixture of privacy and comfort: the proper bathroom door. Thankfully, a new website, BringBackDoors.com, is now alerting travelers which hotels to avoid if bathroom privacy matters to you.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, hotels are stripping away the very thing that separates us from the animals. Guests arriving at midrange and boutique properties are increasingly finding sliding barn doors, frosted panels, curtains, or partial partitions instead of solid doors.

These alternatives may allow light and air to pass freely, but they often fail to contain sound, sight or smell. Denise Milano Sprung, a frequent traveler, described her experience with a frosted door at the Calgary Airport Marriott. While she “couldn’t see the fine details,” she could still see everything else. Even after decades of marriage, that level of transparency is a dealbreaker for many.

The push toward doorless or partially enclosed bathrooms is often driven by cost-saving strategies. As Lisa Chervinsky of Cornell’s Hotel School notes, business travel has yet to fully rebound post-pandemic, while construction, energy and staffing costs have soared.

For hoteliers, a traditional bathroom door represents not just a material cost but maintenance headaches. Handles jam, doors warp, light is blocked and cleaning becomes more frequent. Creative solutions like pocket doors, glass cubbies or partial walls can reduce expenses and open rooms to light, but critics argue these compromises erode one of the most fundamental aspects of hotel comfort, privacy.

The backlash has inspired action. American marketer Sadie Lowell, horrified by her own experience in a London hotel with her father, launched BringBackDoors.com. The site tracks hotels worldwide, categorizing them based on the degree of bathroom privacy offered, from full doors to zero privacy.

More than 500 hotels, including 1 Hotel Central Park and Andaz Mexico City Condesa, have been flagged for offering little to no real barrier between guests and the bathroom. According to an interview with CNN, Lowell hopes her campaign will pressure the industry to recognize that privacy is not a luxury but a baseline expectation.

While some travelers embrace the open-concept approach as modern or space-saving, many are pushing back, including me. With resources like BringBackDoors.com, travelers finally have the power to vote with their wallets and demand a door between themselves and the toilet.