You don't always need to remember how many square metres a good hotel room has.

Sometimes it is something much simpler. The fact that your coffee is already waiting when you come down at eight in the morning. The waiter remembering how you like your eggs on the second day. The curtains drawn when you return in the evening, the bed turned down, a small glass of water left on the bedside table.

These are rarely the things hotels talk about on their websites.

Yet, years later, they are often the things you remember first.

That is what makes staying in a hotel rather interesting. For a few days, you step into a routine created by someone else. Things you normally do for yourself at home are quietly taken care of. Your bed is made, your coffee arrives, your room is cleaned. A good hotel doesn't make a spectacle of any of this. It simply makes the day feel a little easier.

Recently, I went down to breakfast rather late at a hotel. The dining room was almost empty and it was raining outside. The waiter told me there were twenty minutes left before breakfast finished. Then, without asking, he brought me a coffee.

“Make it a little stronger today,” he said.

I had ordered the same coffee the morning before.

It wasn't the hotel's most expensive service. It probably wasn't mentioned anywhere on its list of amenities. But at that moment, I understood why the place felt good.

The moment you walk in

You don't always need more than a few minutes to form an opinion about a hotel.

You walk into the lobby. Your suitcase is rattling along behind you. Perhaps you've just stepped off a plane, or you've been driving for hours. You are carrying all the tiredness of the journey with you.

Then someone looks up.

“Welcome.”

That's it.

A good welcome rarely needs to be more complicated than that.

At some hotels, however, the small procedures begin the moment you arrive. Passport, credit card, form, signature, room number. Everything may be perfectly efficient, but it can also make you feel less like a guest and more like a reference number.

The reception of a good hotel works differently. It becomes a kind of threshold between the journey you have just finished and the rest of the day.

You walk in, and after a while, the journey begins to disappear.

That is why the first job of a good hotel isn't to impress you.

It is to make you feel comfortable.

Does a room really need to be beautiful?

Hotels increasingly like to talk about themselves through design. Natural stone, linen curtains, handmade ceramics, a vintage chair, a beautiful lamp. All of these things matter, of course.

But good design has another test in a hotel room:

Is it easy to live in?

Is there actually a socket beside the bed? Somewhere to open your suitcase? A place to hang the towels in the bathroom? Can you get up in the night without turning every light in the room on?

And perhaps most importantly, do you really have to sit on the bed to use your laptop?

These things may not seem particularly important in a photograph. After three nights in a room, however, they start to matter considerably more than a beautiful piece of marble.

Good design is less about how a room looks than how easily a person can move through it.

Why do some rooms feel like home?

The answer isn't always in the furniture.

You notice it more easily in some of the smaller hotels around Europe. Perhaps the stone comes from the surrounding region. There is a painting by a local artist on the wall. The chair was made in a nearby workshop. The soap in the bathroom was produced a few kilometres away.

None of these things is particularly important on its own.

But together, they begin to tell you where you are.

Because it has become remarkably easy to stay in a hotel room that could be anywhere in the world.

The same white walls.

The same large bed.

The same grey armchair.

The same coffee machine.

A good hotel, by contrast, should look at least a little like the place it is in. It should bring something of the city's sounds, materials, food or everyday habits into the room.

Breakfast is a small test of the hotel

One of the easiest ways to understand a hotel is to go down for breakfast.

Look around the room at about nine.

How quickly are the tables cleared? Does someone notice when your coffee cup is empty? Is a chair brought over for a family with a child? If an older couple is struggling to reach the buffet, does someone step in to help?

These are small things.

But hospitality is largely made up of small things.

One morning, I noticed a couple at the next table looking at a map. She wanted to go somewhere; he was showing her a different address on his phone. When the waiter came over, she asked about a good walking route through the city.

He thought for a moment.

Then, instead of reaching for his phone, he took a napkin and drew a little map.

“Go this way,” he said. “Then follow the river. Stop here for coffee.”

The couple thanked him and left.

They weren't staying in the hotel's most expensive room. But that little map was probably one of the most useful things they took with them that day.

A good hotel gives you more than a room

The area around a hotel can matter as much as the hotel itself.

Can you walk five minutes from breakfast and find a good bakery?

Is there a café on the corner where the neighbours sit?

After dinner, will you want to walk through the streets rather than head straight back to the hotel?

Sometimes the greatest advantage of a hotel has nothing to do with the room.

It is the location.

Or, more precisely, the way it connects you to the place you have come to visit.

A good hotel doesn't have to show you the city. It can simply make it easier to become part of it.

Because when we travel, we don't always want to feel like tourists.

Sometimes we just want to live an ordinary life in another city for a few days.

The staff can change everything

There is another way to tell whether a hotel is genuinely good.

Watch how the staff treat you.

In a good place, they remember how you take your coffee. They notice when you might need a taxi. If it is raining, an umbrella appears.

And sometimes they do nothing at all.

That matters too.

Good service isn't about constantly offering help. It is knowing when to step forward and when to leave someone alone.

Like a good host.

So why do we return?

The answer is rarely just the room.

On the first night, you notice how comfortable the bed is. On the second, you notice the bathroom. By the third morning, you have worked out the breakfast. Then one day you leave the hotel, spend the afternoon exploring the city and return in the evening.

You know who is behind the reception desk.

You know which floor the lift stops at.

You know where you like to sit at breakfast.

You know which light to switch on when you come back to the room.

And at some point, the hotel stops feeling new.

It starts to feel familiar.

That is where the desire to return begins.

Choosing the same hotel again is often about feeling slightly less like a guest.

Even for a few days, you know how your life works there.

Where the coffee is.

When breakfast starts.

Which table is the quietest.

Which light will be on when you return in the evening.

Perhaps that is why a good hotel doesn't simply give you a bed to sleep in.

It makes the rhythm of your day a little easier.

In the end, what you remember isn't how many stars the hotel had.

It is how you felt when you walked through the door.

A good hotel gives you a room.

A truly good one, even if only for a few days, makes it possible to live a little better.