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7 worst romantic hotel failures

Get ready: it’s that time of year again. As we speak, hotels and resorts around the world are stockpiling their Valentine’s Day arsenals, plotting all sorts of ostensibly romantic surprises for their couple guests. Sleeping under the stars… Dinner on the beach… Isn’t it romantic? Actually, not so much. Ever notice how many of those swoon-inducing moments wind up backfiring? Now, don’t
Heart-shaped box of candy
You can't go wrong with a box of chocolates, right?Ryan McVay / Today

Get ready: it’s that time of year again. As we speak, hotels and resorts around the world are stockpiling their Valentine’s Day arsenals, plotting all sorts of ostensibly romantic surprises for their couple guests. Sleeping under the stars… Dinner on the beach… Isn’t it romantic? Actually, not so much.

Ever notice how many of those swoon-inducing moments wind up backfiring?

Now, don’t get us wrong, we love a good romantic getaway. But if industry love gurus paid closer attention, they’d see we’re not batting our lashes — we’re rolling our eyes.

When romance becomes “Romance” and starts feeling forced, simple magic can often turn tragic.

We at T+L have decided enough’s enough. At the risk of sounding like spoilsports, from surprise-and-delight stalkery to turndown jazz, we’ve rounded up supposedly romantic traditions that beg for reconsidering.

See All of the Worst Romantic Hotel Fails

Rose petals in the bed or bath
Sure, it looks sensational: a trail of crimson flowers leading to a foamy tub. Except the bath was drawn hours ago, so now you’re shivering in a chilled fruit salad of soggy rose petals, their gunk clogging up the drain. When you finally give up and get out, you navigate a perilous path of wet flowers across a marble floor. (A rose is a rose until it’s a banana peel.) But the bed, too, is covered in crimson petals, and you’re too cold to bother removing them before climbing in, so all night they cling to your skin. When you wake up and throw back the sheets, it’s like the horse-head scene from "The Godfather": white linens stained a garish blood red, and a sense that something’s gone terribly, terribly wrong.

Private dinners on the beach
To the uninitiated, this sounds perfectly delightful — so much so that people will fork over an extra hundred bucks for the privilege. Here’s the actual scene: Your chair is permanently tilted at 45 degrees in the cool, damp sand. Beach fleas nip at your ankles. It’s too dark to read the menu (as if there were any real choices), let alone make out your entrée or the moth in your water glass. You could ask for another, but your server is 100 yards up the beach, sneaking a cigarette, and the kitchen’s even farther. The wine is warm, the grouper is cold, the night is interminable. It starts to rain.

Couples’ massages
“Good afternoon! We’ve taken the liberty of booking you two in our Spa Romance Suite, so you can enjoy your treatments side-by-side!” chirps the receptionist, handing you robes and slippers. Oh, joy! Now you get to spend the next 85 minutes trying not to listen as your partner whimpers, gasps, and moans, “Me encanta, me encanta!” while her strappingly fit masseur grunts in tandem. Oh, boundless joy!

Star beds
True story: A friend and her husband went on safari. On their final night, the lodge arranged a “sleep-out” under the stars, on a special bed set up in the bush. The brochure promised “unparalleled romance;” the reality was something else. A cold wind swept in from the desert, but under their tarp-like waterproof duvet (“It felt like vinyl siding”) they were soon engulfed in sweat. At 2 a.m. a biker gang of mosquitoes roared through and terrorized them till dawn. “The only stars we saw were from slapping ourselves upside the head,” our friend recalls.

The ignored amenity
Complimentary champagne and a plate of petits fours? Wonderful when they first arrive; unspeakably sad 48 hours later when the ice has melted, the wine label has disintegrated in the water, and the half-nibbled, stale bonbons are now congealed to the plate — yet housekeeping refuses to take it away, thinking they’re being considerate.

Chocolate-covered strawberries
Speaking of amenity snacks … has anyone ever had a truly delicious chocolate-covered strawberry? No, we haven’t either. Those gigantic strawberries hotels tend to serve are dry and flavorless, and the low-grade chocolate hardly improves the taste. Not to be total cranks, but yech. (Double if it’s white chocolate.)

'Private' poolside cabanas
People! Poolside cabanas are never actually totally private. Alas, this does not stop some horn-dog occupants from behaving as if they are. You know we can hear you, right?

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