Last weekend, I had a really great hotel experience, and a really bad one too. The odd thing is, I was in the same room the whole time. So what changed from one night to the next? Simple: a bunch of really loud and obnoxious people stayed in the room next door during that second night.

This normally wouldn’t have been so bad, since most hotels have at least decent insulation between rooms. But our room had an unfortunate “feature”: a door leading to the next room. The concept seems harmless enough: if you’re staying with a group of friends or family, you book adjoining rooms and then open the doors on both sides to form a larger room. The downside: even when closed, doorways between rooms let a lot more noise through than a regular wall.

When I asked the hotel about this, they told me that only some of the rooms have connecting doors. In fact, had I know about this in advance, I could have requested a room that lacks the feature. Which brings me to my point: when both types of rooms are available, the hotel should let you choose if you want a room with those connecting doors, or a room without them. It’s really no different than choosing one king bed or two queen ones. But until they wise up, I’ll be making a special request for the right kind of room during my next hotel stay.