Why don't hotel rooms have liquid soap dispensers?

Like this?

It's too high-tech for a hotel. Seriously. 

And it's unsanitary. 

(Are you already starting to not believe a word of this one? . . .)

This past week I've been letting daylight in upon magic and holding us up for ridicule as an industry disinclined to have our technology keep up with the times and modern needs (Michael Forrest Jones' answer to Why does it take so long to check in at hotels? ), but oddly enough, this really is too high tech for a hotel. Before you start laughing . . . well, here's why: 

How often do hotel workers notice that their luggage carts are missing? How often do guests become upset when they are not available for use?

How often? All the flippin' time, and there's little anyone can do about it. It's one of the crosses to bear in this business (like little old ladies calling the desk in the middle of the night to complain that the guest in the next room is noisy, but when you go up to check, there's not a sound coming from the 'offending' room). 

All you can do is try to keep enough carts around (you should have two for the first fifty rooms, plus one more for each additional fifty rooms). But no matter how many you have (and they are surprisingly expensive, by the way -- even a 'cheap' one runs about $600-700 -- which is why a lot of hotels tend to skimp on them, or keep them around after they've obviously been worn out more than ten times over), when they're gone, they're gone.



And yes, guests do become upset when they need a cart and none are available, but we can't make them reappear by magic.