It’s one of those uncomfortable conversations that sometimes occur between husband and wife. "You really do spend a lot of time in hotels," says Ghislaine Levy-Bonvin to her husband, Jacques. As it slowly dawns on Jacques that the understanding smile he has developed to perfection over 30 years of marriage is not going to work this time, he changes tactics and simply replies, "I wouldn’t say that—at least not compared to other business people."

However, Ghislaine Levy-Bonvin is well prepared for such a response. With the help of her pocket calculator, she has meticulously added up the number of hours and days her husband has spent in hotels over the past 30 years or so. After hitting the "equals" sign, she hands over the calculator so that Jacques can read the result himself. "Seven years," he sighs.

What on earth could compel a man to spend nearly one-fourth of his married life in just about every type of overnight accommodation imaginable? It might have something to do with the fact that he comes from a family that once left the refined Castilian region of Spain to settle in Casablanca. It was there that the young Jacques discovered the works of Marcel Proust and read with wonder his lyrical descriptions of the inner uncertainty that befalls a traveler the moment he or she walks into an unfamiliar hotel.

New colors and new smells are the first signals that you have entered an unknown universe which might well not match your own personality. Invariably, it takes hours or even days to grow accustomed to the new surroundings. "Perhaps it was Proust who first awakened my fascination for the world of hotels," says Lévy.

But maybe it was also the experience of moving to Switzerland and becoming a Swiss citizen. After completing a degree in engineering at the Technical University in Geneva, Lévy joined the German-Swiss company Staefa Control, which specializes in building technologies, particularly for hotels. It was a fateful move given that the world’s first school of hotel management was established in 1890 in Lausanne, just 60 kilometers (37 miles) away. Switzerland was also an ideal place to be for anyone considering a career in the hotel trade. Several of the country’s citizens—César Ritz, for example—had already achieved fame and fortune before World War One as the "The Kings of Hoteliers and the Hoteliers of Kings."

At his new company, the young engineer and his colleagues not only developed new ventilation and pumping systems, but also began incorporating elements from the emerging field of information technology into their innovations. Here was something that needed marketing! It was Lévy who then went about building up a worldwide network that eventually made the company into one of the leading players in the sector. Today it is known as Landis & Staefa.

Lévy’s work during this time laid the foundations for his future career as the world’s eternal hotel guest. And as he discovered, every stay at a new hotel was exactly how Proust had described it—like entering an unknown universe.

Lévy quickly realized something fundamental to his future development: not only was he seeing hotels through the eyes of an engineer; he was also viewing things as a sociologist might do. In addition to looking upon the hotel as a potential customer for his company, he saw it from the viewpoint of a traveling businessman who had checked in for the night. It was a crucial shift in consciousness given that, today, business travelers account for nearly 70 percent of all hotel guests in Europe and the u.s.

To ensure that the level of comfort on offer matched the price of a particular room, Lévy drew up a list of criteria that a hotel should fulfill. Indeed, the more he traveled, the more he became aware of the inadequacies of many five-star hotels. Hotel managers, he quickly discovered, often fail to pay sufficient attention to the things guests cannot see.

The tired guest returning from a hard day’s work certainly gets to hear such things, however. On the verge of drifting off into a well-earned night’s sleep, the guest is rudely awakened by the refrigerator unit in the minibar, which has suddenly sprung to life. And just when the refrigerator has finally decided to settle down at the right temperature and the compressor switches off, loud voices from the corridor come echoing through the poorly insulated door. Naturally, no sooner have the other guests retired to their rooms, than the torture begins anew as the room’s ventilation system begins to vibrate.

By now the nervous guest has also discovered that the room is either too hot or too cold. The thermostat won’t help much, either, as its three settings generally provide a choice between, as Lévy puts it, all or nothing. It’s therefore no surprise to hear Lévy say that hardly any guest ever gets a real good night’s sleep, even in the best hotels.

But it’s not just the unexpected noises that make sleeping in a hotel room a trying experience; there are also the strange smells that can drive guests to desperation. Smells from the kitchen that find their way into the room via the ventilation system, for example, or the olfactory traces of earlier guests, which emanate from the furniture or even the very bed in which the guest is trying to sleep.

At this point, the frustrated guest can abandon all remaining hope of getting to sleep. This is because a tiny nerve located in the nose is now starting to send negative signals to his or her brain. According to scientists, these signals remain stored in the memory longer than any others. As the saying goes: God forgives, but your nose never forgets.

You might wonder how a man like Lévy continues to maintain his fascination for hotels after all of these negative experiences. The answer is quite simple: he talks to the hotel managers not as an engineer, but as a guest. And once he has their undivided attention—not always an easy task, according to Lévy—he’s got a simple message for them: "Things in your hotel are a lot different from what you think they are."

Amazingly enough, over the last 30 years, no hotel manager has ever shown Lévy the door. After all, life is complicated enough for your average hotel manager. As the general manager of the Metropole in Brussels—a personal friend of Lévy’s—explains, "You’ve got to be able to prepare a reception for a guest of state, see that the dishes are being washed in the kitchen and make sure the building’s heating system is okay—more or less all at the same time."

Such flexibility works to Lévy’s advantage, especially since he makes sure that any criticism is always accompanied by a potential solution. For instance, he explains to managers that there are compressor-free refrigerators on the market, which therefore operate silently. He also tells them how doors can be better insulated, or where to get low-noise air-conditioning systems that allow guests to sleep more peacefully. Naturally, heating and ventilation systems can be fitted with remote control technology to regulate room temperature. Last but not least, there are also sensor systems capable of detecting undesirable odors.

As a consequence, the friendly man with the winning smile, who has such terrible things to say about the manager’s hotel, is quickly perceived as a welcome helper in ensuring appropriate levels of comfort. Listening to him also makes good business sense. After all, guests are only likely to return if their previous stay was a pleasant experience. In any case, more than 1,700 hotels around the world have been persuaded by the logic of what the man from Switzerland has to say. And that means good business for the company that pays Lévy’s hotel bills.

Since that company became a part of Siemens, Lévy has seen himself as something of a representative of an industrial empire. Which isn’t surprising, given that Siemens employees spend up to 400,000 nights in hotels around the world every year. As such, they have enormous financial clout when it comes to influencing the great hotel chains of the world.

Lévy was recently asked by the head of Europe’s largest hotel chain why so few Siemens employees choose to stay at his establishment. Lévy smiled and pointed out that Siemens people generally prefer to stay in hotels where they can enjoy the comforts of their company’s technology.

But any hotel wishing to pass the "Lévy Test" with flying colors has got to offer more than just a good night’s sleep and a pleasant odor. In the end, the most important consideration is the safety of its guests.

This is the aspect that concerns Lévy the most. And with good reason. In the 1980s Lévy found himself in a life-threatening situation as a result of lax safety precautions.

"For more than 65 percent of business travelers, safety is the most important factor as far as selecting a hotel is concerned," says Lévy. "However, most hotels lack easily accessible systems that allow guests to make rapid contact with reception staff in the event of an emergency."

There are several elegant solutions to this problem. Systems that use sensors to ascertain whether or not guests are in their rooms are just one example. Such sensors can also be used to switch rooms over to an energy-saving mode when they are unoccupied. Surveillance cameras, however, are considered a risk—at least since one gang in Taiwan succeeded in hacking into hotel networks. The "intruders" managed to record intimate proceedings in some of the rooms, which they then reproduced in video-form.

Lévy’s own experience with bad safety has led him to cooperate closely with security technology specialist Cerberus, the Siemens Building Technologies business unit. In fact, the unit’s products are now always available as part of any solution he has to offer. For example, Cerberus produces a fire alarm unit that is virtually infallible. "Many of the fire disasters that occur in big hotels are ultimately the result of security personnel switching off alarm units that were triggering too many false alarms," he says.

The globe-trotter believes that a lot has improved at the big hotels over the past few years. Much of this progress is certainly due to the man from Switzerland, who never tires of preaching his hotel philosophy at conference after conference. Not surprisingly, his book "Technical Hotel Management" (see box) has advanced to become the industry bible just two years after publication. However, as the marketing director for hotels at Landis & Staefa admits, despite all the new technology, the best communications technology around is still a face-to-face conversation.

These days, Lévy’s favorite hobbyhorse concerns the fundamental error hotel planners have been making for the last 40 years: drawing up technical specifications for a hotel in the same way you would for a bank or any other office building.

The experts at Landis & Staefa are now busy trying to iron out this strategic mistake with a system known as ALADIN. In the past 12 months, more than 80 hotels in Germany, Italy and Switzerland have gone along with Lévy’s view that this technology is the best and most effective way to ensure a perfect hotel experience.

Jacques Levy-Bonvin is usually the first to admit that his working life has not always been a bed of roses. In fact, he says he’s stayed in very few hotels where he actually woke up feeling well rested. He chooses not to name these selected havens of peace. Ghislaine, his wife, is the only person who knows their whereabouts.

HARALD HOTZE is a journalist and author. He lives in Brussels and writes for the Welt am Sonntag newspaper and other publications. ALBERTO VENZAGO is a freelance photographer and lives in Zürich.