It was like a high-class brothel, where else can you get contraceptives, as well as cakes on top of the mini bar…
Reading through a review of the Beverly Hills Crescent, I was startled to come across this comment from someone who was outraged that the minibar included condoms. (I also had a rather different experience of the place, but that is covered in another post.)
This is not going to be an amenity review, exactly, because I have not had any personal experience of these kits, beyond glancing curiously at the outside. But I’ve seen “intimacy kits” (two condoms, lubricant, and “obstetrical towelettes”) in several hotels now, and I get the sense it’s a growing trend. I suppose I could see the poster’s discomfort (maybe) if they were packaged in a tacky or overly obvious way, but they’re really not. There’s just a little tin with a small black label, describing the contents in such terms that your average child would be unlikely to guess what they’re for. This seems sufficiently harmless not to offend any but those who are categorically opposed to contraceptive use at all; but who knows. (Another blogger praises the idea, though the kit described there is less discreet and swaps in mints for the towelettes.)
What worries me about them is that there doesn’t seem to be an expiration date listed on the outside of the tin. I realize that latex lasts longer than food, but I have occasionally found things in minibars that were multiple years past expiry; it seems to me totally possible that one of these kits could, theoretically, languish unused for years in a hotel room; and it would be a good idea, I rather think, to give the potential users some way to check their integrity before using.
