I've been on the road for the last month, and there's more to come. Right now I'm in Amsterdam for a few hours, to be followed by a few events in London, then on to New York for Singularity U's Exponential Finance conference, followed by the opening of our Singularity University Graduate Studies Program for 2014. (You can attend our opening ceremony June 16 by getting tickets here -- it's always a good crowd)

But while on the road, let me lament about what's missing from so many of the hotel rooms and AirBnB apartments I've stayed in, which is an understanding of what digital folks, especially digital couples need.

Desk space

Yes, rooms are small, especially in Europe, and one thing they often sacrifice is desk space. In particular, desk space for two people with laptops. This is OK if you've ditched the laptop for a tablet, but many rooms barely have desk space enough for one, or the apartments have no desk, only the kitchen table. And some only have one chair.

We need desk space, and we need a bit of room to put things, and we need it for two. Of course, there should be plugs at desk level if you can -- the best thing is to have a power strip on the desk, so we can plug in laptops, camera chargers, phone chargers and the like.

Strangely, at least half the hotels I stay in have a glass tabletop for their desk. The once surface my mouse won't work on. Yes, I hate the trackpad so I use a mouse if I am doing any serious computing. I can pull over a piece of paper or book to be a mousepad, but this is silly.

Monitor

Really sweet, but rarely seen, is an external monitor. Nice 24" computer monitors cost under $150 these days, so there should be one -- or two. And there should be cables (HDMI and VGA at least) because while I bring cables sometimes, you never know which cable the monitor in a room will use. Sometimes you can plug into the room's TV -- but sometimes it has been modified so you can't. It's nice if you can, though a TV on the while is not a great monitor for working. It's OK for watching video if I wanted to.

For extra credit, perhaps the TV can support some of the new video over wireless protocols, like Miracast, Widi or Apple's TV protocol, to make it easy to connect devices, even phones and tablets.

Sadly, there is no way yet for you to provide me with a keyboard or mouse in the room that I could trust.

Power

Though when it comes to phone chargers, many use their phone as their alarm clock, and so they want it by the bed. There should be power by the bed, and it should not require you to unplug the bedside lamp or clock radio.

Another nice touch would be plugs or power strips with the universal multi-socket that accepts all the major types of plugs. Sure, I always have adapters but it's nice to not have to use them. My stuff is all multi-voltage of course.

Luggage holders

Most hotel rooms come with a folding luggage stand, which is good. But they should really come with two. Couples and families routinely have 3 bags. A hotel should know that if you've booked a double room, you probably want at least two. Sometimes I have called down to the desk to get more and they don't have any more -- just one in each room. If you are not going to put them in the room, the bell desk should be able to bring up any you need.

Free Wifi (and wired) without a goddamned captive portal

I've ranted about this before, but captive portals which hijack your browser -- thus breaking applications and your first use -- are still very common. Worse, some of them reset every time you turn off your computer -- or your phone, and you have to re-auth. Some portals are there to charge you, but I find that not an excuse any more. When hotels charge me for internet, I ask them how much the electricity and water are in the room. It's past time that hotels that charge for internet just have that included in the online shopping sites like Kayak and Tripadvisor when you search for hotels. Or at the least I should be able to check a box for "show me the price with internet, and any taxes and made-up resort fees" so I can compare the real price.

But either way, the captive portals break too many things. (Google Glass can't even work at all with them.) Cheap hotels give free wifi with no portal -- this is a curse of fancier hotels. If you want sell premium wifi, so be it -- but let me log into the basic one with no portal, and then I can go to a URL where I can pay for the upgrade. If you insist give me really crappy internet, 2G speed internet, with no portal, so that things at least work, though slowly, until I upgrade.

If you need a password, use WPA2. You can set up a server so people enter their room number and name with WPA2-Enterprise. You can meet certain "know your user" laws that force these portals on people that way.

And have wired internet -- with a cable -- if you can. At a desk, it's more reliable and has no setup programs and needs no password or portal at all.