@Hooploop I’ve found that it’s not worth staying in a 4 or 5 hotel unless you’re going to book through their own site and purchase one of their middle rooms or higher. If you book off something like Booking.com and get a deal or something, EVERY single hotel anywhere in the world seems to now save completely shite rooms to account for this, even if it’s supposed to be some world-famous hotspot.
I was in New York, a place I already loathe, and thought eh, here’s a deal for the Waldorf Astoria, might be a bit of fun to stay. Of course, the rooms they saved for the “deal” did have the size bed they claimed, so you couldn’t really complain, but otherwise, they were much, MUCH shabbier than your average Travelodge. The carpet was peeling from the walls, the heating banged all night, the wallpaper had actual gouges in it, like from an angry badger - I mean, all just proper, “Has anyone touched this room since 1983?” feeling.
So when I had to stay at hotels, I learned to just book middle-range room at a 3*, because otherwise you were going to end up in a shitty, shabby broom cupboard. Unless someplace like Residence Inn, where you can trust all rooms to be the same. You can usually trust the Marriott chain hotels. Either they’ll be clean, or if they fuck up and you complain, they’ll actually do something about it.
But the BEST tool in my opinion: always look at TripAdvisor - it’s other people saving you money because you’ll never be misled about another hotel. Don’t worry about just written reviews, as some can be up or down; look at the photos. Users will have posted pictures of the rooms and loos and possibly every square metre of the hotel itself, and you can see which pictures are the most recent so you’ll know if what you’re seeing on some hotel’s website is the true reality vs. their carefully curated website or Instagram reality, before you book.