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.

@deviantfeline Care to share the name of the gastro hotel so we can avoid it 😬 ?

Chewton Glen. I had high hopes but found the service like something out of Fawlty Towers. The reception staff member who showed us out room had a crisis of confidence about whether it was the correct room half way through and told me off for putting my things down as he tried to rush me back out of the door (it was actually our room). Then at dinner I was told off again by a waiter, as he’d put our wine in a bucket across the room then failed to top up our glasses for about half an hour despite us trying to get his attention. So in the end in desperation I walked across the room and got it myself at which point he told me that wasn’t allowed and to stay in my seat. It was dreadful throughout, incompetent amateurish staff and a constant sense that they expected us to feel grateful to be there despite it being shit. Really the last of the old wave of British higher end hotels outside London, before the market was shaken up by a lot of new entry. Awful.

Rutland hotel in Edinburgh. It was very well decorated but the windows overlooking princes Street were glued shut so no fresh air..only air con. It was part of out honeymoon and I caught an awful cold which ruined the rest of our time. I always seem to catch something when air con is the only source of air.

Hotel in Margarita (Island off the coast if Venezuela)

Not all of it was down to the hotel.

Frequent power cuts (at least one a day)
Room basic and shabby
Every inch of the complex was tiled and as we had almost 2 weeks of rain there were numerous accidents (every other day you'd see someone new in a cast or with crutches)
Food was basic and boring
Alcohol was limited (and in the pissing rain there wasn't much else to do but drink)
Access to the beach was limited and patrolled by security to prevent us tourists getting robbed by banditos
Staff at hotel seemed to be in competition as to who could make us wait the longest for drinks / food at the bars / restaurants.

I can't blame the hotel for the weather - which ended up cancelling most of our excursions (and the excursions were the main reason we picked the destination!) - but they seemed totally unprepared and unable to cope with the wet weather. It is a rainy island but was open all year round (we had unseasonal wet weather and were just unlucky)

a supposedly swanky and glamourous hotel in Edinburgh, wildly expensive. Room was like a cell, no window, no room to put anything down, and one person had to sleep so they had to climb over the other to get out of bed. My partner at the time described it as like doubling up in a single jail cell 😂

Had booked for two nights, but was so claustrophobic and horrible we left after one. They did not seem surprised by our complaint, and gave money back! It did very much did not capture the golden age of travel as billed

I stayed there on a work trip a few year back and got bitten by bedbugs. I was covered in huge welts and when I phoned them to tell them they could not have cared less. It was shockingly run down. Such a shame for a beautiful old building

I stayed in a “hotel” in London for a work trip. Thankfully it was only one night!

I worked for a university at the time and they had to book for me, within their procurement policy. I chose a hotel and requested it, only to be told it wasn’t on the approved list so they’d chosen another one and booked that for me.

When I arrived it was essentially a very tall terraced house with the glass panel in the door blacked out with newspaper. Reception was a bloke smoking in a back room. He waived the £10 key deposit because I was “a genuine customer”. The room was disgusting and tiny, the bed sagged, and the floorboard beside the bed seemed to be missing, judging by the way the carpet dropped into the hole. All night I was woken up by “couples” traipsing up and down the stairs, and I only felt safe to try to sleep with a chair wedged under the door handle. Obviously there was no food available for breakfast.

I was livid that this was where work had thought it was appropriate to book in a young woman travelling alone, and that they’d rejected the hotel I’d requested in favour of this!

Booked a "hotel" near the Empire in Shepards Bush years ago. It was to see a gig there + it was mine and DP's first weekend away together so we were really looking forward to it. I have no idea what the rooms looked like as we didn't get past reception. We walked in to find no-one there so rang the little bell on the desk. We were slightly put off by the faint smell of vomit but when the guy eventually came out to check us in me and DP just looked at each other and both thought the same thing..."we're not staying here". "Reception guy" was wearing a filthy string vest with what smelt like a joint hanging from his mouth and greeted us with a growl. We just turned and left without saying a word and legged it down the road. We ended up walking for what seemed like miles and saw a hotel which we decided we were going to stay at.....it turned out to be a 5* Hilton so cost a fortune but by then we really didn't care.

Oh and just to put the cherry on the top....the gig was cancelled at the last minute. Our 1st weekend together was a memorable one but not for the right reasons😂

A hotel in the lakes
Dirty bath, only one bath towel and one hand towel.
No hairdryer, the info said hairdryer in every room but there was a laminated card on the dressing table that said the electrics in the hotel were old and that meant that they were unable to put dryers in every room but reception would provide one if needed
No iron ⬆️
Trouser press was hung on the wall but not wired in ( see above electric issue)
Knackered bed with piece of hard board underneath the mattress as the frame was broken, also chunk of wood underneath one corner as a leg was missing.
Furniture from the 1960’s which was chipped and stained
Threadbare carpet.

@GateauxBlaster I have a theory (based on experience) that any hotel with the word "Manor" in the name is generally awful and best avoided.

I'm surprised by the number of people saying travelodge... I have stayed in them regularly for about 25 years all over the country, never had an issue.

They are my go too for consistence because you always know what your gonna get and that it is decent. Nothing 'fancy' (no valet, porters, spas, night bar men etc... obviously for the cheap price) but consistently clean and acceptable across the company.

I recently stayed at the Adelphi in Liverpool when seeing Taylor Swift. I had expected it to be a bit ropey from the reviews, but it was far worse 🤣 the bed to be fair was really comfy and clean, the room was totally enormous but the bathroom was bizarre with a huge jacuzzi bath that had gone a yellowish colour with age, ancient trickle of a shower and the whole thing was so old and tired it freaked me out. The room was all dark wood panels and quite creepy. Found out on checkout that it's one of the most haunted hotels in Britain!

Stayed at a superb high end hotel in Houston, formerly a bank iirc. However, we felt stifled and the room was just an hotel room, although lovely and everyone we met obviously loved it, it was ‘old’ for America, wood panelling etc, very formal. We hated it so much we left after one night and booked into the nearest Candlewood Suites, which is a chain. Bloody loved it, we’d stayed in one in Vegas. It’s literally a suite, huge living room, big bedroom, lazyboys, kitchen. Downstairs there’s a gym, laundry and vending machines.

It inspired us to buy lazyboys back home, which turned out amazingly, because having spent a huge amount for us at the time, we then received a letter and a cheque for the full amount, saying we’d won the competition of getting everything we bought that day for free! Didn’t even see a sign!

First visit to Los Angeles, booked into a standard looking motel. The interior was very much like those motels in US drama/movies. At night however, there were strange creaking sounds from the dimly lit bathroom. The room light would flicker on and off. My imagination ran a bit wild so I decided that I’d have to sleep with the TV on for some ambient light and noise.

Bizarrely, the only channel available was playing hardcore porn- I think the TV was mirroring someone’s computer as I could see the website pages, and the cursor moving around to select video thumbnails! Didn’t know if it was deliberately televised to all the rooms or a mistake in the computer user’s settings. So I spent a rather fitful night with non-stop videos playing at medium volume to drown out the bathroom creaking. I woke several times from the light / sounds of the TV and each time I looked at the screen, there was a different video playing and the cursor continued to move around. It was like having free PJ entertainment all night. (PJ - porn jockey)😖

I just remembered a really grotty ‘country house’ place DH and I stayed in for work, in Chesterfield. It looked like it hadn’t been touched since 1980, pink toilet, brass lights, and peach floral pelmets. When we checked in, the receptionist was really off with me. She turned to my husband and asked “Will your, er ‘friend’ be staying with you?” I immediately pulled out my driving licence to prove that I was his wife, not a sex worker. He still laughs about it now.

A Best Western in upstate New York. I was on a work trip auditing suppliers in New England and this one was in the back of beyond with limited hotel options. The man on reception had never seen a passport before and called his colleague over to have a look when I checked in. Fine, kind of sweet. The room was clean but very dated - cheap panelling, floral curtains, heavy valance sheet that made me check under the bed for serial killers. Ok, I can deal with dated. The restaurant was built half over a river and I could literally see the water running through gaps in the floorboards under my table. In the morning, there were mice scampering around the breakfast room. I skipped breakfast and ended up eating lunch somewhere in Vermont, in a cafe that doubled as someone's front room complete with possessed dolls. The food was good though!

We stayed there too, a good while ago now. Wasn't as bad as your experience, but singularly underwhelming and nowhere near value for money.

Premier Inn Goodrington Sands in August a couple of years back. Was taking a friend to hospital, and decided to sleep over so very much a last minute booking. Given what appeared to be a lovely room on ground floor, turned out it was their last remaining room and was actually set up for disabled. Mattress was completely saggy both sides, and full of lumps. Complained to reception who was polite and said sorry you didn't sleep well, when I pressed for the fact I thought the mattress was at fault and wasn't that what Lenny Henry advertised a good sleep (I did also mention the noisy people on patio outside still up after 2am). As I was complaining before 6am night reception effectively shrugged shoulders and said there was nothing they could do as they were full, so I just checked out and got nearly 3 hours sleep in our (very comfortable) car in their car park so all was not lost as I still had to do the hospital trip and the nearly 4 hour drive back home. Later emailed to complain under PI sleep guarantee, got auto email acknowledgement but no reply to my complaint, emailed again and got another acknowledgment of that email, but again no actual reply from a person. I really don't think they were monitoring those emails as they seemed to disappear into the ether. Gave up. Annoying as was £188 wasted, as really no more refreshed than own bed at home and a 4 hour drive.
Has put me off PI, I wouldn't book in a busy location on a busy day if you paid me.

On the way back from Scotland in 2021 (when everyone was having uk hols) decided to book a stopover halfway back. Everywhere we fancied (Crosby, Formby etc) fully booked. The only 3 bedroom place we could find was in Crewe. When we arrived it turned out to be a converted office block next to the station. The "apartment" was literally a sectioned off area of offices with beds in, barely any other furnishings except some office desks and blinds etc. (The beds and bedding were brand new and clean thank goodness as was the teeny bathroom. ) I called the host as there were only two bedrooms but was told the tiny kitchenette which had a sofa was in fact the third "bedroom". We found the duvet and pillows in the cupboard under the sink but no covers for them. We headed out for some food and noticed various signs in the corridors "no marijuana", "no weapons", "no syringes" etc so it seemed most of the "hotel" was some sort of bail hostel. We were very glad to leave in the morning! It was cheap at least.

Brook Mollington just outside Chester. A few years ago now, but it was shabby and the staff had a good trick of trying to charge you twice for rooms and food.

Paid up front for the evening meal and then went to check out and tried to charge me again, which I obviously could prove I'd already paid. When that didn't work, tried to then charge me for the room. This was paid up front by our travel provider for work, so they backed down.

Whilst stood there waiting for my two colleagues to check out, they tried the same trick with them.

Booked late for a conference...everyone else was in a very slick, corporate hotel. We were not. Everything that should have been white was yellow, there were prison bars on the windows, and every wall had haunted-looking paintings of sad Victorian children. The worst thing was, however, that after about 6pm the staff all seemed to go home and the front door was locked. There was a constant background noise of banging as people turned up and hammered on the door until another guest got up to let them in. One of the people I let in ranted at me about how long he'd been stood waiting until he could be made to understand I didn't work there. He still somehow expected me to be able to book him into a room, and was incensed when I had to leave him stood in the empty Reception with his suitcases.

This sounds like an episode of Inside Number 9!

@Intriguedbythis when I told another hotel guest about it they said they'd seen him and reported him to the police. Apparently the police knew him and said he "simple" and that he wasn't dangerous. I've never gone back to Rhodes as the whole attitude to it put me off (hardly surprising!).

I stayed in Scarborough opposite the grand hotel. Got caught in a really heavy rainstorm and was soaking wet. They wouldn't let anyone in till check in at 3 pm. The room was freezing, pubic hair stuck to the wall in the bathroom. Couldn't get the heating to work and neither could the staff!!! Ended up sitting under 2 duvet trying to get warm in September 😂😂😂😂 according to the staff it was due a refurbishment 😳😳 also I'm disabled and the fire doors were incredibly difficult to open. I used the lift as the restaurant/bar was up some step's......nerve wracking!!!! I did a very thorough Google review 😂😂

God I wish I remembered!