Pimped Out Hotel Showers

Gettysburg Wyndham shower

Wal Street Journal: Hotels are hitting the showers—with crystal chandeliers, glass walls and even hammocks.

In an ongoing race to differentiate themselves from other hoteliers, new upscale properties are outfitting their shower stalls with multiple heads and other sleek features.

Guests at the Wyndham here, one of two hotels in the expansive Gateway Gettysburg complex, get a cavernous, 43-square-foot shower with five shower heads. Two are mounted on opposing walls at thigh level, two more heads at chest level and a fifth overhead.

"The first thing I thought was, 'How do I use that thing? And when I use it, I hope it won't come at me like a firehose,' " said Amanda Witman, a Wrightsville, Pa., resident who held her wedding at the Wyndham in August.

The shower is an obvious target for change as hoteliers strive to offer time-strapped travelers a quick escape in their rooms. "A lot of people want to have something that's just a bit different and more luxurious than what they have at home," said Gene Kaufman, a New York-based architect who has designed more than 70 hotels.

The revolution in elaborate showers primarily is taking place in newly built, upscale hotels, with nightly rates of $200 and up, depending on the market. In many cases, they have replaced bathtubs entirely, though tubs remain a fixture in the pricier luxury market.

In Morgans's Mondrian South Beach hotel in Miami, the shower head protrudes from the bottom of a hanging crystal chandelier. The shower walls are decorated in a blue-and-white tile mosaic of clouds. The W hotel in Mexico City provides spacious showers with hammocks that guests can lounge in.

There is a drawback. Some guests consider elaborate hotel showers to be impractical. That's the reaction that Linda Simard, a sales and marketing representative for a beer company, had to the Wyndham Gettysburg's five-head shower. She and other guests found the dual-control knobs confusing. And, when all five heads are turned on, the overall water pressure drops. Ms. Simard ended up using only the main head and leaving the others off.

"Your first impression when you walk in is, 'Wow, that is wicked cool,' " she said. "But it doesn't do anything for me. I just think it's overwhelming."

As business travel has become far more common over the years, hotels have been shifting their tub-to-shower ratio more in favor of showers. "Most people, when they're going to work in the morning, don't drop and lounge in a tub," said Ted Hunter, Wyndham Worldwide Corp.'s chief of development planning and construction.

The industry's new rule of thumb for newly built hotels: Tubs belong only in rooms with two double beds, since those are the most likely rooms to house families with children.

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