What's been your most disappointing hotel experience?

[QuintessentialQuokka]

This is inspired by the fact that I'm having a mildly but nigglingly disappointing hotel experience right now. The room is clean and has everything you'd expect - but it's a bit shabby and a bit small and the bath is half length and the kettle has exactly one free tea bag and one stick of coffee granules and one mini capsule of milk and the carpet looks like it came from a conference centre in 1991 and the lift is a claustrophobe's nightmare and takes a week and a half to arrive when summoned. In short, it feels like a 60 quid hotel room and I paid 200 for it as a rare treat, more fool me.

If you'd like to, please make me feel somewhat better by sharing your most disappointing/worst hotel experiences. Thanks.

Also you can tell that it used to be a smoking room because there's still a slight fug of it 17ish years after the smoking ban, which does not speak to a frequency or urgency of redecoration.

A 4* Hilton in London. Room was filthy - carpet moths, food mushed into the sofa, drawing on the walls. I can only assume the room was used as emergency accommodation during covid.

basically, we’d messaged to say we wouldn’t be checking in until 9.30pm and they’d replied it was absolutely fine, but they gave our room away so put us in one that hadn’t been checked or used for a while. We complained and they “upgraded” us to a gorgeous pent house suite but couldn’t understand why we weren’t super happy. It had 2 double beds and there were 5 of us so less beds than we’d booked! My three teens had to squeeze into a double but they were exhausted by this point.

I wonder if you are at the hotel we stayed at a couple of years ago. Mould in the bathroom, no hairdryer and staff wouldn't come up with one so I trailed through the hotel with wet hair. No handtowels either because they don't provide them. £200 for £60 quality in shabbyville. The olde world charm had disappeared with the service.

It's principally a wedding venue now, in Kent.

The hotel recommended by my mum! I should have known her standards ( and how she chooses by the lowest price) and mine are very different.

The room, as it was one of the refurbished ones, was fine. The common areas were like a nursing home, old, pastel pink wing back chairs set in a huge circle around the edges of a cream, wood chipped room. Awful.

The Grand in Scarborough. Worst place we have ever stayed. Considering the price (at the time) and the way it looks from beach. Its famous! We were in this room that was so far down it was basically underground at the earths core. It had no windows. There was what looked like blood on the wall. It was grotty and basic. We had to queue up for over an hour to check in. Never ever again, every time I see it on booking . Com I think noooooo!!! Also stayed in the discovery inn in Leeds / was comfort inn. Was so rough we had to pay a deposit for the remote control to the tv.

To be honest I think hotels in the UK are all a bit touch and go, and astronomically expensive. I've never really had an absolutely all round wow experience. They all have an air of faded grandeur and fall down on basic service even when you're paying top dollar. I know it's got worse since the pandemic and I know hospitality is struggling but it wasn't exactly brilliant before.

Quite famous for being so awful. My partner described being served by the staff off ‘Acorn Antiques’.

And the choice of drinks at dinner.

“Carafe of wine?”
“Yes please”
“Red or white?”

The Conservative candidate for mayor was going to purchase it and refurb it using public money…or so he thought. Obviously not a vote winner! 😆

Ritz-Carlton in Sarasota, Florida.

The night we arrived, dinner in their dining room took nearly 3 hours - they kept coming out and telling crazy stories about why it was taking so long.

Bathtub drain was so clogged that water was up to my knees by the time shower was finished. Had to wait about a half an hour for water to drain for DH's shower.

Went to loo in the middle of the night - couldn't open door. Pushed and pushed - finally woke DH - he couldn't do it either. Maintenance came at 3a to remove door and repair it, and I got dressed and went down to the loo in the lobby.

AND it rained all week-end.

Several years ago, we went to the US to visit family and made a detour to see a solar eclipse - totally worth it; strangely exhilarating. To see the eclipse we went to a place in South Carolina and we stayed in one of the most filthy motels I have ever been. I have a high tolerance for bad housekeeping but this was beyond the pale. I had read the reviews and was braced. I knew to request extra towels before reception closed in the evening. Our room had 2 queen beds (clean sheets) and an en suite. There was a horrible smear on the inside of the en suite door. The carpet had not really been vacuumed (for many a time) - I found someone's earring back! The pool had red and green tiles but this made the water look brown - it was fine, my kids and I loved it. The room had a mini-fridge (standard UK under-worktop size) and a microwave oven. On a whim, as we were leaving, I opened the microwave - it was the cleanest place in the room; it was absolutely sparkling!

I have frequently stayed at The Ashley House Hotel in Cambridge. It is tatty and down at heel. There have been signs up for 10 years advising of impending refurbishment ... but it is cleaner than the place in SC.

Hotel in Barcelona (not cheap) where my room overlooked the back. The extremely vocal and jolly rubbish collectors and their beeping lorry came down the alley at 4am. Then the recycling collectors, same personality type, came down the alley at 5am. Every night.

@RosesAndHellebores any chance it's where Farage was this week near Maidstone? If so I feel your pain-

My ILs always book the most god awful places to stay when we go away with them. DH has put his foot down now and we stay somewhere else close by.

The one that sticks out was when they booked for us to stay in what they said was a country hotel in the Lake District but which actually was shared bunk rooms above a climbers pub. Bunk beds, no private bathroom, shared bathroom down a flight of stairs, no heating (it was November), looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. What made it even worse was I had a broken ankle at the time and was on crutches…

Grand hotel, Scarborough. We were literally 2 storeys below ground with no WiFi or phone signals. Awful awful place.

I've just put the same one!

I was 25 and was doing a craftfair locally for 3 nights.
I arrived late and the B&B had lots of dolls in the window which gave me the creeps.

The landlady was in a wheelchair and very old, she made me pay cash for the 3 nights. In the morning she cooked a bit of bacon and raw eggs and raw tomatoes.
Another guest threw up in the shared bathroom upstairs, she had hired someone to clean the rooms daily but they hardly did any cleaning.

On the last day I packed and she was at the bottom of the stairs and she shouted 'You are leaving and haven't paid!' I was answering 'I ha\ve I paid on the first night!' She somehow got out of the wheelchair and started crawling up the stairs and stretching out her hand towards me still shouting at me. I ran past her and out the front door, it was terrifying.

Not a hotel per se but I went on a Royal Caribbean cruise last May and hated every single second of it.

not in UK Ex DH booked a hotel in Marmaris it was as far from centre as you could get was clean but hadn't been updated for about twenty years very shabby and the curtains only came 3/4 the way down the balcony doors so as soon as sun came out at 6am it was daylight in the room the company he booked it through went bust not long after if this was the standard of their accomadation choices im not surprised

TBF, the Grand in Scarborough is notorious for being awful.

Brittania hotel Nottingham.A shit tip of the highest order. Look on Tripadvisor! I stayed there whilst visiting daughter at Nottingham Uni !

Anything that says Royal or Grand, beware as it's often not Royal or Grand atall.
Mine would probably be the Royal Albion in Brighton,it was run down, scafgolding on the front, food was fibre and it had a sea front location, if you could see past the scaffolding. Sun mon tue was ok, wednesday the hotel flooded, the drains failed & it was enough damage to evacuate all 108 guests & move them to a hotel in canary warf in london.
Fine if youre fit but not so much if youre 80+ & just wanted a quiet seaside break.
I believe it has since burned down, shame as it would have bern a nice place in its hayday.

I can empathise

Once spent more money than we usually would on a night's stay in central Athens, the building was old and beautifully renovated but the floors were wooden and uncarpeted

We came back from an evening out and went to bed and spent three hours listening to creaky floorboards every time someone used the stairs or walked down the corridor past our room and what sounded like people occasionally dragging furniture about. It was really weird and we couldn't figure it out. About 2am the scraping reached a crescendo and I had enough and got out of bed to phone reception (I had no idea how I was going to explain what we were hearing) and then it just....stopped. Total silence. Realised it was the top floor bar that closed at 2 and the noises were chairs & bar stools being moved.

Spoke to reception the next morning & they were totally dismissive. I was really confused until I realised they most likely get complaints daily and the only way they dealt with it was to pretend it wasn't happening.

I've remembered being a young thing of 22 and booking a shared hotel room in Italy with a friend. Room was extremely basic, breakfast was packaged crackers and a small piece of tepid cheese, and the hotel was in a red light district so every time we stepped outside we got eyed up, cat called and propositioned.

Actually the most disappointing was Hotel Velvet in Manchester. Everything seemed to be old and falling apart. The bathroom flooded easy. The noise from the clubs was abysmal and there was no noise proofing. Further exaggerated by the loud shagging next door. Paper thin walls.

always highly recommended but I thought it was fairly shit for the money.

Many moons ago… before my DEXH and I were married we went up to Edinburgh to get him a kilt our wedding (to be fair he is of a clan with the surname to boot, even though he himself is about as Scottish as Donald Trump). We stayed in a little place near to Princes Street and my goodness, I was only early 20s and hadn’t stayed in too many hotels by that point, but even I knew this place had seen better days. Dark blue prison couture walls, carpet that made rough hessian sacking look like Axminster, and there wasn’t a door or drawer in the place that wasn’t hanging off the hinges. The crowning delight was finding a pair of knickers and a USED condom under the bed. I wouldn’t even have looked there but for the fact that on the second night DEXH got scratched by a Poltergeist in the Covenanters Prison and made me ‘check’ all over the room before we went to sleep, even under the bed, what for I haven’t a clue…

Conversely I regularly travel to north Wales with work and when I can I stay in a lovely community-run pub that was brought back from the brink by the locals. It’s cheap and cheerful - nothing fancy at all - but the welcome is warm, they remember you the next time you visit, they feed you a feast and you never go thirsty. It’s a fab little place in the mountains and I feel so at home when I visit.