Sometimes less costly can mean more comfy

THROUGH none of my own doing and without being asked where I wanted to stay, I’ve been placed at some of the most posh hotels in America by the organizers of events to which I’ve been invited to speak. One recent stay was at a “deluxe boutique hotel,” breathlessly touted in fashion magazines, featured as one of the “world’s 500 finest hotels” by Travel & Leisure and placed on the “Gold List” by Conde Nast Traveler.

I occupied a $325-a-night room, in which I had my most uncomfortable hotel night in recent memory.

Because this particular property is the latest costly knockoff of an approach made famous by hotelier Ian Schrager and his trendy French designer Philippe Starck (it was not a Schrager hotel), the room and its furnishings were meant to have visual impact but to supply little else. There was not a single easy chair, not a single reading lamp. Lighting throughout was recessed and subdued, creating no area in which one could comfortably read a book or newspaper. The bed was for guests 5 feet tall. The chairs -- such as they were -- were spindly, shaky but stylish contraptions with hard bottoms. The shower stall had such slick artistically colored floor tiles that you clung to the faucet to avoid falling.

Jutting from a strangely angled mosaic pedestal, the bathroom sink was a tiny stainless-steel bowl about a foot across, with a rim of perhaps 1 or 2 inches on which to balance (precariously) your toiletries. The most careful attempt to shave left the bathroom floor covered with water.

The experience of staying in a hotel that’s actually favored by fashion models, rock stars and elitist travel magazines has caused me to give some attention to the plight of a group for whom I never thought I would have compassion. But it is painful to think of the discomforts encountered by travelers of wealth.

Instead of enjoying a large, comfortable room with two queen-size beds and a spacious bath/shower, as in a Holiday Inn for $85, they squeeze into an ill-furnished, impractical, high-fashion work of art for $325.

The same with their meals on the road. Instead of enjoying classic ethnic dishes honestly and simply prepared at a low-cost Italian, Greek or Chinese restaurant, they wait upwards of an hour at a “Continental” bistro for foods piled high on top of one another to make a fashion statement.

May I suggest that these lavish lodgings and pompous restaurants might soon be dwindling in number?

From every current travel statistic, it appears that more and more Americans are growing wise to the foolish pretensions of haute couture hotels and show-biz eating. It looks as if the free-spending American traveler is fading from the scene, to be replaced by people who budget and spend cautiously.

Those conclusions are buttressed by general travel industry trends. Millions of low-priced air-and-land packages are now sold each year. Sales of cost-saving recreational vehicles are booming. Budget motels are doing well. Budget airlines are the only ones to show any profit, and the standard airlines are scrambling to create budget airlines of their own.

In short, budget has become beautiful, and more and more Americans are obviously convinced that budget is better.

And on my next speaking trip, I’ll choose my own hotel, thank you.