Have you been to an awful hotel?

Yes, OP. The Days Inn in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Have fun reading the reviews!

I haven't stayed at any truly bad hotels, but it seems like proper temperature/humidity control is challenging in many of them.

I wish more of them had fans. I like for the air to be circulating and dehumidified or else I can't sleep well.

No, but right now staying at Ivens hotel Lisbon. Wow, just wow. Incredible service and as a bonus due to Marriott status EVERYTHING is included even the minibar and snacks. Did not make a pig of myself but did enjoy the Grey Goose daily.

R3 unable to read the room.

R4 and the thread title as well.

Hotels, no.

Motels….

Times Square. The rooms had office storage room tile flooring and shared bathrooms in the hallway.

A hotel in Venice as part of a Perillo Tour I took with my parents. It smelled as if something had died in the walls of my room. Our tour guide told us, "It's Venice, the star ratings don't matter here. They charge what they want and most aren't nice."

The W in Westwood. They neglected to tell guests that the hotel was under construction while we were staying in it. When we and others complained, they offered nothing, insisting all guests had been told.

This was the hotel. It had a slightly different name when I stayed there.

I once stayed at a Motel 6 in Saint Cloud, MN. I was traveling for work and had a late dinner, got back to the hotel around 6 p.m. and there were about a dozen squad cars parked in the lot. Turned out there had been a fatal shooting in one of the rooms! I asked a cop if it was safe to stay there that night. His response: "Well, it doesn't seem likely that there'd be *another* shooting here tonight."

Ugh, meant to say got back to the hotel around 11 p.m.

I stayed in a hotel in in Austria during the Austrian International University Ski Championships. It was filled with gorgeous young skiers and I didn't get laid once. Awful experience.

I shredded a tire on Long Island and ended up in a transient’s hotel. Gruff night attended behind a scratched plexiglass barrier, crescent shaped dent surrounding the door handle from attempted break in with a crowbar, deep tan shag carpet full of burn marks.

Spoon shaped, sunken mattress fitted with dirty sheets (outline of a human head on all pillowcases, smell of BrylCream, dentures and hairspray) and a gold/green comforter in pilled woven satin polyester.

Slow clogged toilet that flooded bath previously, plastic bucket labeled for condoms and sanitary napkins. Film of sewage residue on linoleum flooring in bath, and more burn marks. Two hand towels stacked on toilet, which was fitted with a replacement take cover.

When roadside assistance arrived to flatbed my car to the nearest dealer, several “guests” rolled out onto the second floor exterior walkway to watch. These guests/residents were mostly in wheelchairs, multiple amputees, on oxygen. Very sad and depressing. Also a real sense of danger from meth addicts and those looking for them. It was rough.

The room was very dank and musty and smelled like “feet-n-ass”.

Night attendant, not night attended

The most memorable awful hotels involved the decor. Yes, Mary. My parents took us to Disneyland, back when there were a bunch of space age themed motels surrounding Disneyland. My brother and I could not stop laughing at the decor. Everything was bubble-shaped, colorful. I feel bad, now, for how asshole-ish we were acting when my parents were trying to give us a nice experience.

The other hotel was at a resort. It was a beautiful location, but the hotel had not renovated in forever. Very '70s-looking inside with the yellow, orange, and green. It just was not relaxing to be in that room.

The Marcel in NYC. The rooms are the size of a walk in closet. The carpet wasn't even attached to the floor, it looked like someone just did a hack job and cut it out with a pair of scissors. The elevator wasn't working. I didn't even have enough room to set my suitcase next to my bed. The AC unit sounded like a chainsaw and reeked of mold/mildew when I turned it on.

To make matters worse, someone apparently brought a fucking cat with them and let it roam the halls (either that or a stray somehow wandered into the building), and it ran into my room just as I was about to head out to my meeting. It wouldn't get out of my room and I ended up being late to the meeting.

I started to fill out a guest comments card, with all these complaints but I hadn't yet brought it down to the service desk. I left it in my suitcase for the time being. Someone later that evening called my room and said they were notified I had complaints about the AC, which means the fucking maids were snooping through my stuff while I was gone.

I once needed a cheap fast getaway and stayed at a locally owned motel in a beach community. It was cheap, so it served its purpose in that regard. But...it was repulsive. The room was tiny, the bed might as well had been plywood on cinder blocks, there was NO air conditioning, and I had to climb over the toilet to get into a really gross shower stall. The carpet had to be 30 years old and never cleaned. Their website acknowledged the rooms were small but called them perfect for a romantic weekend getaway. The motel was knocked down a few years ago and condos were built on the land.

As a poor and very naive college student in the 70s, I backpacked through Europe with "Europe on $2 a Day" as my guide. Some of the lodging suggested was dicey. I recall one instance in France I couldn't figure out why the desk clerk asked me - in broken English - if I wanted the room "for the whole night". Naturally this was the hotel room I picked up crabs. I learned later that hotels such as that one did not change the sheets between "liaisons". Unfortunately I did not know the French word for "crabs" and couldn't find the only product I knew the name of - RID - in the French drugstore.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Carter Hotel.

The Luxor in Las Vegas.

I stayed in this hotel and while I didn’t have a horrific experience the people in the room next to me did. I could hear them screaming about all the giant roaches in the middle of the night. One of them was even saying to their companion that they were from the south but had never seen so many roaches. It was run down and dingy looking but so cheap. The room was huge and comfortable enough. I didn’t see a single roach the whole time I was there. I didn’t eat meals in my room but I did have some snacks. I made sure that I kept any food wrappers in a bag in the mini fridge because I had heard New Orleans had a roach issue.

Motel, not hotel. On a band trip in the mid 1990s, our Wheeling hotel double booked, and the band boosters had to find another place for us to stay, more or less immediately. This is what they came up with.

It was across the river in Bellaire, Ohio. There were bullet holes in the walls, stains on the walls and carpets (purported to be blood, as some of them really did resemble blood stains), porn playing 24 hrs a day on the big screen tv in the office, and a shower in one room that may have well concealed dead bodies in the wall behind it (the shower looked like it had been bricked up, as it was much smaller than the rest).

Years later, I was living in a different part of the state and met two sisters who were a few years younger than me. They were from Wheeling, and said they'd spent time there in the late 1990s, and that it had gone even further downhill (if that's possible). It was essentially a flophouse, where addicts and criminals squatted. Even the Bates Motel in "Psycho III" was better than this hell hole.

The photo in the link was taken during demolition, but there are plenty of other photos online. It didn't look much better before they began to tear it down.

It's long gone now, but I'll never forget it.

Empress Hotel in New Orleans advertises itself as "two blocks from the French Quarter" but it's the neighborhood hangout for trannies, crack addicts, hookers, tranny crack addict hookers, pimps, thieves, meth heads, cockroaches, bedbugs and more. Clogged toilets and sinks, mattresses wrapped in thick plastic, portions of walls missing, leaking ceilings, doors with no knobs ...

The reviews on TripAdvisor and Yelp all sum it up. More than one reviewer says, "I cried."

The Ritz Carlton in Paris. They were full booked and overwhelmed so they thought it ok to pick me up at the airport in a chauffeur driven Mercedes Benz instead of my usual Rolls Royce. Who do they think they are?

Yes, I have.

Comfort Inn & Suites - Mojave, CA.

Homophobic hell. No climate control. Reeked of cigarettes.

Long story, and too disastrous to write about.

On an 80s road trip I spent 2 weeks at the long-gone Hummingbird Hotel, a haven for the men Tom Waits stole his act from. Yes, it was crawling with huge roaches, had nasty shared bathrooms and I was scared to touch anything, but it was only a hundred bucks a week! Oh, to be young and free and explore the unknown. The grill downstairs was similarly grimy but had great food. Best quote from the attached article:

[quote]My favorite memory was the hand-written sign over the pay telephone that read 'No Talking to Imaginary People'.

Yes, I stayed at La Mirage in Denver back in the mid-80s. Some crappy lounge singer with the ridiculous name Dominique Devereux sang every evening in the overpriced restaurant. To top it off, on my last evening there, some crazy woman named Claudia lit her room on fire. The fire quickly spread and all of us guests had to run for our lives. Sucked.

There's a Facebook page called Remembering The Hummingbird. There are some cool photos, including one of their 86 list:

[quote]Symonds - Shit in trash can

Yes, a motel in Virginia off 81. I was so tired I didn’t look too closely when I got in. The next morning I realized I was staying in a bug infested crap hole and I cut the living hell out of my hand while trying to get a light fixture to work. I brought the light to the office and showed them my hand. They didn’t care. My hand didn’t need stitches, thank goodness.

There's a small hotel

that's a living hell,

I wish that we were there together!

I’m embarrassed to even post this story on an anonymous board but I stayed at the worst hotel ever in Las Vegas, my mistake was not planning my trip with sufficient time and research so I ended up with a bundled trip that included a flight on Frontier airlines and a stay at Circus Circus which is totally repellent. The lobby was over run with trashy people and crotch fruit running around bumping into people making a mess.

The elevators were the only way to access the rooms and they were filthy, discarded food and food wrappers and bottles littered the floor but the worst was the vomit in the corner. During our stay the elevators broke down and we had to wait around in the play area/mall part to kill time during the repairs and that was even worse than the lobby.

We were so embarrassed we started asking the Uber drivers to drop us off at the corner souvenir shop due to our shame.

[quote]a stay at Circus Circus which is totally repellent. The lobby was over run with trashy people and crotch fruit running around bumping into people making a mess.

The one time I went to Circus Circus (thankfully not staying there), it was about midnight and the walls of the casino were lined with children asleep on the floor, some in sleeping bags with pillows. The parents were so trashy they just left them there while they gambled all night.

I described this to a server at a restaurant and she wrinkled her nose and said, "Circus Circus. We call it Diaper City."

West Shore Motor Lodge in Staten Island

I think they're still in business unfortunately. I was travelling with my younger brother to NYC. He had rented a car and didn't want to stay in Manhattan. Of course, New York travel guides didn't cover hotels and motels in Staten Island so I just picked one out of the yellow pages. This was before most people had internet so no TripAdvisor, etc. The whole room reeked of cigarette smoke. There was a big mirror on the wall next to my bed so couples could admire themselves while going at it hammer and tongs. The towels felt like sand paper. The front of the drawer of the night table had been torn off. Everything was dirty and dingy. I didn't see any bugs. The next morning, we checked out and found a hotel that was more expensive but a million times better.

Stayed t this drary hotel directly across from The Boardwalk's original location in North Beach. It was absolutely past its orime, it felt abandoned, but hey, it was on the beach. What I recall most in terms of awful was the remote control for the TV was bolted down to the bedside table, which was bolted to the floor..

So many it's hard to count. One pension in France where the bathroom down the hall was a hole in the ground with foot prints to tell you where to squat. Had to catch the Amtrak out of Jacksonville, Florida once, and it left at Zero Dark Hundred in the morning, so I thought it would make sense to stay in a hotel by the train station, which was about 15 miles outside of Jacksonville proper. I could have put my hand through the walls they were so thin, and I definitely heard the people next door breathing, as well as gunshots during the night. Old timey motels in Maine and Oregon, advertised as right on the ocean, but made so poorly and cheaply that the floors were all tilted and weird bathrooms with very inadequate showers. A hotel in Astoria, Queens, that I chose for proximity to the Steinway Factory. The man staying directly above me was screaming so loudly I thought a murder was taking place. The desk clerk didn't seem too perturbed, but did eventually call the police. A weird motel in Portland, Oregon, chosen for proximity to Forest Park where a conference I was attending was happening. Hot, dirty, horrible clientele. Some scary places in the Midwest, chosen as desperation shelters after many hours of driving on cross-country trips. A faded palazzo fallen on hard times in Genoa near the railroad station, where the shower in the room had to be left open, because there was some sort of direct connection to the sewer, probably dating from Roman times, and the drain would roar like a lion, unless the shower was left strongly dripping all night. (I'm starting to feel sorry for myself now).

A Marriot in LA. I called down to the front desk to ask if I could borrow a phone charger and this little cunt says "scoff no we don't do that sort of thing" as if I was asking for a helicopter. I hope he's still working at that 2.5 star shithole.

R36 I have stayed at a hotel in Virginia Beach where the television was chained to a radiator.

I’ve stayed at a lot of shitty hotels for one night during road trips. But it’s usually not a huge surprise when they suck. A pretty typical thing last year was no breakfast buffet / coffee even though all the websites still list it. But when you arrive, you find out it’s been discontinued due to COVID. Over a year into COVID the websites should all be updated. And before everyone starts calling me a fat whore looking for free donuts, it’s annoying because on a road trip you don’t want to make an extra stop for coffee right at the beginning of the day’s drive.

The worst (by far) destination hotel I ever stayed at was the Westin in St John. I was using Starwood points and didn’t expect it to be great, but it was really awful. This was a decade ago, though. But that’s how bad and run down it was. I still remember it as my worst “real” hotel experience.

There has never been a Ritz-Carlton in Paris.

[quote] During our stay the elevators broke down and we had to wait around in the play area/mall part to kill time during the repairs and that was even worse than the lobby.

No interior fire stairs?

My partner and I were visiting his family in West Virginia. I love using Priceline, and use the Express Deals to cop a low price, but it is a roulette wheel that has potential for disaster. First night we selected a 3 star hotel, and we scored a MicroTel. , The 2nd night we thought we would pick a less expensive hotel. I selected a 2 1/2 star selection. We scored a Days Inn, on the outskirts of Charleston. We show up, and could immediately tell it was the hookers and street drug hotel of choice. We should of just left, but Priceline is no refund for Express bookings. So we power through. We were the only guests that provided a credit card at checkin. Everyone else checking in, were using cash deposits. Our room was on the 2nd floor, in the rear. We were instructed not to use the stairs nearest the room, as they were extra rusted, and not safe. Use the middle stairs. Well the middle stairs looked rusty as shit as well. And the railings on the 2nd floor were as well. As we got near our room, we saw the dilapidated back stairs, but shockingly they did not have any barrier blocking it’s use. The room has a king size bed, with about a 4” foam mattress. Activity in the hotel went all night with loud conversations outside, doors banging, and the thumping of people walking down the outside open halls. When we leave in the light of the morning, we were horrified to see the top rails on the 2nd floor were thoroughly rusted out, the entire length of the building, at the brackets where they were attached to the building. If you would of leaned on the railing, they probably would of collapsed. We vowed to never select less then 3 2/2 star ratings in Priceline again, also because of another adventure with me using Priceline to book a long weekend getaway for New York City. Another story.

Venice. A palazzo on a canal (not the Grand). Owner made all the non-Italians open their suitcases when checking out to ensure they weren't stealing the hotel's towels. Several years later, when the hotel got around to putting up a web site, I left their first Zero Stars review, based on my experience.

Twenty-some years ago, a friend and I stayed at the Belvedere gay guest house in Cherry Grove on Fire Island. It was a run-down over-the-top ornate place that had seen far better days and was run by a 400 year old nasty queen. When I went to bed, I discovered that a mouse had made its bed in my pillow and there was mouse shit everywhere. (I must have been the first person to use that room since the previous season.) Of course the crypt keeper had gone to bed and there was no way to get a change of sheets. When I complained in the morning, the old man just laughed and said he'd do my a favor by not charging me for the extra guests (the mice!). I hope he died a slow painful death.

A hotel right on the date palm plantation Timimoun, an Algerian oasis. I wasn't expected 21st C accommodation and indeed received 11th C.

Going anywhere with OP's gaping stinking diseased prolapsed anus would be awful. The awfulest.

Vietnam, I think it was in or around Da Nang. 2015. The place was half under construction, and smoking was permitted anywhere and everywhere. Ashtrays in the elevator.

The rooms were huge, not to say cavernous, but were incredibly sparsely furnished. Food was downright pathetic: one friend asked for a soup of the day, which was really just a bowl of hot water with three sad chicken legs in it.

Strangely enough, the garden was gorgeously landscaped, with romantic little corners one could sit and watch over one of many reflection ponds.

Maybe it’s better now, but I stayed here with a group of friends in 2007. It was totally bizarre. Everything was shabby. The towels were so thin they barely absorbed water. The elevator barely worked. Housekeeping were tall, scary, Eastern European women. I asked for an ironing board, and the one they delivered was just the metal frame, no fabric cover over the top. You had to leave your key at the desk when you left.

Of course, we called it Hotel Susan St. James.

I’ve been to a number of hotel in the “Gay areas” of big cities. They charge a premium because they attract gay tourists but the interiors are often with IKEA-like furniture and sparse.

got a free room at a Motel 6 in Atlantic city. it was "fine" just in a crazy marginal neighborhood and it smelled of smoke, like a LOT

wouldn't go again

DL grammar Nazis: is it OK to say “would of” instead of “would have”?

Nein, r52

Travelling with my father, when he made the decisions, was always disappointing. My earliest memory of family vacations was staying at the Kona Kai motel in Las Vegas. I'm sure, when it opened, it was a lovely motor-hotel; the pictures in the brochure had spacious, light-filled rooms, a nice pool, and a restaurant that I can't remember was attached or simply nearby. The reality was a dark, small room that was filthy, the door not only wouldn't lock, it wouldn't shut, and pillows were so disgusting that we couldn't use them, and we ended up sleeping on top of the beds with blankets (we'd brought with us for, until that moment, I did not understand why) spread out on top. The pool had large blobs of green goo floating on top, and the restaurant was closed by the authority of the state.

The last time we took a family vacation in which my father chose the itinerary and accommodation was when I was 14. As usual, he did not actually plan the trip, saying part of the fun was just pulling into a town, finding a motel and seeing what the neighborhood had to offer. Well, when you set the budget at roughly half the going rate of an acceptable motel, you get what you expect. He wheeled into another motor lodge that had vacancy, and it was a repeat of the Kona Kai only in a really bad part of town. I can't even remember where we were as it was the moment that I'd had enough of his bullshit. The room wasn't just filthy, it was bug-infested, stank like the walls were made of dead fish, there was no hot water, and the towels — both of them, for a room meant for up to 4 people — had shit and blood and more unidentifiable body fluids on them.

It took me about 1 minute to declare that I'd be sleeping in the car. What made the trip complete was that the argument that ensued made us fit right in with the other occupants as my father kept insisting that I "stop acting like we're too good for this motel!" and me saying that either I slept in the car or else, and it finally dawning on him that I meant it when I said I'd go get the luggage out of the car and instead simply left and walked to the bus station we'd passed a mile back to buy a ticket home. As I neared the depot, they came screaming up in the car when my father yelled at me to get in because we were continuing on and looking for another place to stay.

I love that R33 and R34 both called out Circus Circus in Las Vegas, as that is my nominee as well.

I was right out of college and living in LA (mid-00s) had never been to Las Vegas and some friends and I foolishly figured that there would not be much difference between any of the hotels on the Strip and we would only be in the room to sleep anyway and wow, what a great deal on a hotel room

As we were checking in, these four drunken women on the line in front of us got into a knock-down bitch fight and the staff treated it like it was an everyday occurrence (seems it is). We paid for a room upgrade and the room itself was fine, but the guests were as described above--sort of a half-step above homeless--and there was no avoiding them or the staff as we went in and out of the hotel.

Fortunately we were only there for two nights.

Is the Carter hotel still there? It was truly nightmarish. I went there a couple of times in the 90s with hustlers I met at Stella's or Cats.

A tiny run-down motel in a long strip of old motels in Blythe, California. It was about $30 a night when I stayed there 5 years ago. I don't remember the name of the place but it's probably changed by mow anyway.

The lady at the desk was super nice. But the room was hot and uncomfortable (Blythe gets very hot) and the air conditioner was weak. Fortunately the floor was bare concrete, with no rugs or anything, which made it seem a little cooler. The wi-fi signal was so weak I had to walk down near the office to check email.

About 9 pm there's a knock on my door. I look out the window and it seems to be a young woman, so I open the door a bit. It's a prostitute about 25 years old. I still don't know if it was male or female. Long blond hair, failed glamour drag queen clothes. He/she askedme if I could give him/her a ride to another motel about a mile down the street. I said, "No, sorry." He/she says, "What are you doing tonight?" I said "Just resting" and shut the door.

It made me sad, because this person was pleasant-looking, and could fit into society in a normal way, but was reduced to finding tricks in a dead-end small town in the desert. I got up early in the morning to leave and he/she was nowhere to be seen. So I guess he/she found a ride.

The complimentary continental breakfast.

Screaming kids and Fruit Loops scattered everywhere.

R54 poverty is grueling. I hope you found some easier and clearner living in adulthood.

Danke R53, mein Gruppenleiter!

[quote]R54 poverty is grueling. I hope you found some easier and clearner living in adulthood.

I'm not sure R54 lived in grueling poverty at home, R59. If his family was that poor, they wouldn't have taken trips. When you're travelling by car and have to find accommodations in small towns, you're going to find sketchy motels, especially if you pull in late in the evening and you're very tired of driving and check in to the first motel you see.

One for me was a Days Inn in Lincoln, NE. We were driving from the Midwest to Denver for a vacation and this was the end of our first day of driving. The lobby was small and enclosed in glass and the glass - which was originally clear - was now stained a dark amber, because clearly, the ancient hag behind the desk had been smoking in that lobby for decades.

But that wasn't the worst of it. When we got the key and went to our room, as soon as we opened the door we were hit with a wave of mold smell. It was coming from near the AC unit and it was so bad it was actually growing OUT of the AC and up the wall. And for the final kicker.....a mouse scurried across the carpet.

I got THAT one cited by the Health Department.

I fourth Circus Circus, that place is disgusting. Another Vegas trip that was awful was the Tropicana, gave me a room that hadn't been cleaned, room they ended up giving me had , one outlet in the room, shower clogged with hair, was was located directly over the stage, so I heard Andrew Dice Clay's stand up act every night.

One time I was working in a remote location, maybe Montana? North Dakota? Probably 2018 or 2019. Nothing there. No air bnb, no bed and breakfast, no hitlon or marriott, no IHG or even Days Inn or even off brand motel like Super 6. Ended up staying at a place that still made carbon copy receipts and physical keys on the side of the "highway". They had a restaurant with the word "Cauc-Asian" , in a huge sign, spelled like that. Outside the rooms were beds of fake plastic tulips; inside there was a painting of a small child in a field. Across the street was a bar where they served deep fried bits of creamed corn. The company refused to expense the cost because they did not believe the receipt was real until I showed them pictures of the exterior, which I still have.

I'm very allergic to bed bugs. One time I was stuck last minute in Hollywood; 2 am rolls around and I'm booking a Days Inn to shower in, my god, the bed bugs, I go down stairs, tell them I'm not staying, they offer to give me another room, I say no, they go to get "someone", a woman comes in with a small kid, they give her my room. I stopped them, but gross. Also in California: stayed at some historic hotel probably famous people had died in or something, no space and a community bath room. Gross.

R63 and others: how do you search for bedbugs? I have to stay often in hotels now and I am terrified I might incur them and bring them home.

[quote] Have you been to an awful hotel?

Yes -- the Cecil. A real dangerous shithole, too!

Portland (Square?) Hotel, Times Square, NYC. Stayed there in 2010 for one night. Room was tiny, shitty shared bathroom/shower room, scaffolding on the outside *and* inside of the building...and that crap room cost around $150 (over 10 years ago). NYC is the worst city ever for lodging, way overpriced, zero value for money, you spend a small fortune for crappy rooms!

You really can't expect much for $150 in Manhattan, R66. One possibility is to book a hotel way out in the suburbs that is near a commuter train line like Metro North. Then you'll get more value for your money. Of course, there's the drawback that if you're doing most of your sightseeing in Manhattan, your hotel isn't nearby should you need to use the bathroom, change your clothes, etc.

Airbnb is another possibility.

[quote] DL grammar Nazis: is it OK to say “would of” instead of “would have”?

As stated above, no, it's not OK to say "would of." You can say "would've" and I think that's why people think "would of" is OK (but it's not).

Yes, OP, I have. But you should have SEEN HIM!

R54, good story and well-written. Glad you got your way on that issue. My dad was super-frugal as well, so I can relate.

Las Vegas: Circus Circus is depressing-looking even from the outside. My advice: rent a car and stay off-strip, either in the old downtown (no, not fancy) or even further away from both the Strip and downtown.

R67 I don't know about that. I was looking the other day I saw plenty of $200 chain hotels in Manhattan. He doesn't have to stay in an absolute shithole if he's on a budget. I've also done the airbnb thing where it's $50 less than a hotel but is in a garbage-reeking walk-up and has a shared toilet. I think Manhattan airbnbs are a poor value.

I think LA is the worst major American city for hotels. I alway end up staying in terrible hotels because the usual corporate chain hotels are 300+ a night.

I’d be interested to spend a few hours here because if it’s history but I’d never sleep here. It looks like a shithole. It may be the place the Black Dahlia was murdered.

I must have when I was younger with a limited income, but now I stay in higher-end properties. A number of years ago I stayed at the (now) InterContinental New York Barclay when it was going through a renovation. When we arrived, the lobby was well-appointed but when we got to the room, it was shabby and it was well past due for renovation. More recently, I was traveling in Slovakia and stayed Bratislava's DoubleTree where I discovered that it was okay (apparently) for wedding parties to last all night and free to play loud music until the early morning hours. I even asked to be moved to an upper room and still heard the music. Also, was traveling in Nepal a few years ago and stayed at the Hyatt Regency in Kathmandu and found out that I was sharing my room with a mouse.

When I first arrived in London, I stayed at this giant hotel that was kind of a flophouse for men (I had read that it was really cheap). The sheets had black hair all over them. But the young guy manning the desk was so cute. I kept running into him outside and he would nod and say, "alraht" and I'd say, "Yes, I'm fine, thanks, how are you", before I realized it was just a greeting that had no meaning.

I stayed in the Hotel Pennsylvania shortly before it was closed for good. It was truly awful. .

R56 dear, the reason that hotel and other hotels are nightmarish is because skanks like you use them for hookers.

Stay away from any property owned by South Asians.

Do you mean like the Mandarin Oriental, the Peninsula and the Shangri-La chain hotels, R77? You're right. I hear they're real dumps.

Myself, I'm more amused than offended by awful hotels, or by awful things that happen at hotels. Three incidents which, low-key though they be, amused me:

Once upon a time I was lying down on my bed--or should I put "berth"?--at a boat hotel on the southeast side of Gamla Stan in Stockholm. The sheets were damp and cold such that one could feel the mildew growing from the bedding onto one's skin. Anyway, as I lay there, I felt a little breeze . . . and realized that at some point guests in the next room had drilled holes in the paneling separating the rooms . . . presumably so that they could watch the bedtime antics of other guests. I stuffed tissues into the holes and went to sleep.

Another interesting experience was at a hotel in Wells, Somerset, England, which had originated as the medieval gatehouse to the cathedral there. There was nothing wrong with the room; but it had a bathtub . . . and if you dared to put water in it of sufficient depth to bathe and sufficient warmth to keep you from becoming an ice cube, the other guests would bang on the walls that you were using up all the hot water in the hotel.

Then there was the hotel in Bergen, Norway, where, just arrived, I opened the window to get fresh air in the room and its glass immediately fell out onto the street below.

Oh yes, the worst “hotel” I ever stayed in was in New London, East Wales.

R79, I admire your equanimity re: the hole-drilling in the wall (for spying). I would have gotten the fuck out of that hotel. That's fucking creepy.

I don't know how you can confidently book a room at a hotel that you've never been to before because there are reviews for every single hotel that make it seem like a bed-bug ridden, paper-walled den of filth

Newton, East Wales I meant!

[R64] I sit down and the bites appear within a few minutes, sorry, I don't have any special tricks.

Heston was peak hotness in this movie. And he is shirtless most of the time...

oops wrong thread....

Yes, in Melbourne, Florida. We were on a road from Orlando to the east coast then south through Miami to the Everglades to Key West. We had a hard time finding a vacancy in Melbourne but finally got a room for half price because the motel was still being renovated from previous storms. It was damp and smelled terrible. It was a horrible night and we left early and headed south.

After a delayed start from Orlando due to crazy feeder storms from a hurricane off the Keys, we finally got to Melbourne after driving through a tornado watch area. I had no idea hurricanes included feeder storms and tornados. There was still a lot of damage along the coast south of Melbourne from the previous storms, with ruins of mansions overlooking the sea.

There was also damage in Key West when we got there, mainly palm fronds piled on the streets from high winds. Other than the impact of hurricanes it was a fabulous trip.

I enjoy visiting Florida but could never live there. Number one is the right wing wackjobs, then hurricanes, alligators, and humidity.

Van Buren Street in Phoenix in the '50s was a wonderful strip of new motels with a "Kon-Tiki" type restaurant. Now the motels are all falling down, half of them have been razed and what's left is filled with prostitutes. Too bad; I bet it was a fun place to stay way back when. It's still fun to drive down it and look at what's left, even with all the prostitutes walking around.

I have traveled a lot for work and pleasure, and after reading these posts, I guess I’ve been pretty lucky. The two worst that come to mind were an AirBnB in London and a hotel in Venice.

In London, the place was sketchy. One of the reviews mentioned that someone had broken in during her stay and stolen all their stuff. When I got there, the owner was high as fuck. The sheets hadn’t been washed, and walking on the floors turned my socks black. The light in the entryway didn’t work, so you had to climb the steps in the dark, and the door to the apartment had a janky lock that didn’t always work. I was there for a week and didn’t really give AF as I was taking a break from an exhausting 3 months of traveling around. I washed the sheets, scrubbed the floors, and cleaned their house like Joan Crawford in a manic episode. When I would leave to go out, I would hide my stuff in their closet and secure it with a padlock I brought, and when I was there, I put a chair in front of the door that made it impossible for anyone to come in. It was a dump, but it was in a great location and really cheap. When I left, they were so appreciative that I had cleaned it for them and offered to let me stay for a free week in the future (no thanks).

In Venice, the hotel smelled like…well, smelled like Venice. When I got to the room, the toilet was literally filled to the brim with shit. There was no place to lock up valuables, so I padlocked my bag to the bureau when I went out. The plug on the washing machine did not fit the type of outlets they had in the laundry room, and when I found an adaptor to plug it in, it caught on fire. And when I got into bed, things were crawling all over me. I got them to change my bed, and they fixed the washer and toilet. I rewashed the sheets in hot water, and luckily didn’t take any critters with me. Looking back, I should have left-especially with the bugs-but it was only two nights, cheap, in a great location, and I didn’t give AF at the time.

Oh, God on a wheel! The Stillwell Hotel. This shit hole in Downtown LA!

Worse was the Flamingo in Vegas years ago. The room was stuffy and I got bit by some bug and ended up with a puss filled nodule on my leg that started small and by the time we left had grown so large I had to immediately go to the doctor and get it drained!

Ambassador Hotel

Smaller towns/cities in third world countries where it literally smells like shit because the sewerage systems aren't as good as in the west.

[quote]R63 and others: how do you search for bedbugs? I have to stay often in hotels now and I am terrified I might incur them and bring them home.

I think, without turning the lights on, you go to the bed and very quickly pull down the bedspread and top sheet and see if you see anything scurrying away. You should keep your luggage on a luggage rack or in the bathtub, not on the carpet. A bed bug in the bathtub will never be able to climb out because the sides of the tub are too high and slippery. If, heaven forbid, the sheets and pillowcase haven't been changed, you'll see black spots where the previous occupant has squashed adult bed bugs in his sleep (I know, a very charming image 😆).

If there's lots of bed bugs, you will have no trouble noticing them. They'll be crawling on the walls, the carpet, inside dresser drawers, etc.

R61 is correct, R59; we weren't poor although my father grew up poor through the Depression which explained his attitude toward money and specifically, not spending it. Bottom line, he was cheap. My mother explained it as PTSD from growing up so poor. The motel incident when I was 14 came on a trip to California when we'd visited and stayed with friends so close we considered them relatives. In the middle of our stay they had an anniversary to celebrate and wanted a night alone; even as a kid, I thought it was weird that we were there in the first place, and as an adult I realized it was because my father had guilted the woman (and her second husband) who was a lifelong friend of my maternal grandmother into accommodating us to save money on motels. He was pissed that they asked us to "take a drive up the coast and enjoy a night out!" and was being cheap.

In full disclosure, I'm sure I wasn't easy to deal with. I was a horny 14 year old in Southern California where the boys made my eyes pop out of my head, had just spent three days with people old enough to be my grandparents and had three more to go. I really did want to go home, and not solely because of the skank motel. The whole "vacation" was an elaborate excuse for my father to say he'd taken the family on one, with his goal being to do it for as little as possible. This was not a secret. He talked about how much we were [italic]not[/italic] spending constantly. I now remember where it was; as we drove home at the end, he griped, "If we hadn't had to say in that expensive motel in Monterey, this whole trip would have only cost a hundred and fifty dollars!"

With all due respect R89, you sound like you have a major masochistic streak, especially if you knowingly checked into an AirBnB whose reviews mentioned break-ins and then spent part of your vacation cleaning out the skanky property for them.

The Hotel Yorba. All they got is vacancy.

The Best Western Philadelphia on 22nd and Spring Garden -- gloriously now demolished. It was a building on stilts with parking lots under the entire structure that spanned out in three directions. You can tell it was once a modern place when it was built in the 50s but come the 2010s, it was a run-down shit hole with hookers and every low-life you can want from Philly. One time I checked in there and there was a used hypodermic needle resting above the headboard.

Fascinating R98, there is a luxury condo-building on this site now.

[quote] With all due respect R89, you sound like you have a major masochistic streak, especially if you knowingly checked into an AirBnB whose reviews mentioned break-ins and then spent part of your vacation cleaning out the skanky property for them.

You’re probably right, r96. I was three months into an 18 month trip across Europe and Asia that I didn’t really plan to come back from. When I mentioned that I didn’t give AF, I truly didn’t give AF. Luckily, my head is in a better place now. I wouldn’t stay at either of those places again.

I lived in a Days Inn for a little while (less than a month, for sure). There was a Burger King next door and I've never eaten so much Burger King food in my life. However, it was fine (the Days Inn). I'm not that picky as long as it's safe and relatively clean.

Anyone else too paranoid of Ring and security cameras in every room to ever use Airbnb?

I stayed at this very weird hotel in Hillcrest (San Diego) just last month. It wasn’t dirty or gross, but the elevator wasn’t working (my room was on the 4th floor); the bed wasn’t within reach of either a light switch or a surface of any kind (I had to drag a chair over to serve as a bedside table); and there was no door between the bedroom and toilet, just a weird magnetic folding thing that was broken. And it’s next door to a 7-Eleven with the usual coastal California menagerie of tweakers and freaks hanging around.

It was cheap and conveniently located, but if I ever go to SD again, I’ll stay somewhere else.

I have yet to stay in an Airbnb with "security cameras in every room" R102

I usually avoid boutique hotels in general

R104 obviously they wouldn't be evident

Concealed security cameras are placed in smoke detectors and cable boxes under the TV

Yep... if staying anywhere my advice is: get a lock for your luggage. And check the room for cameras. I've been to many places and early on found too many indicators that my luggage had been looked through. So definitely get a lock for it.

And clocks and alarm clocks R107

If you're staying in someone's living space in 2022 when they are not there, you are being watched whether you know it or not

I stayed in the Hotel Monte Vista in Flagstaff, supposedly haunted. Well, it was so bad even the ghosts wouldn’t go there. It was a cold night and the rooms were freezing, the mattress a thin and lumpy affair covered with what seemed to be old thin sheets, thin covers, tv from the 50s that if I remember correctly only got the stations that were on in the 50s. Did not seem particularly clean and not up to date at all.

If your father made you live like you were hobos, what's the difference? You described the vilest accommodations imaginable. Your father sounds mentally ill and a cunt. No-one who has money would put their family through such nastiness.

You can never anticipate the scent of flowery perfumes and hair products lingering from thousands and thousands of previous guests and the random land mine hallway door-slamming in the morning

On one of those "Forensic Files"-type shows, the chemist had to analyze a motel bedspread for semen. She found 186 different men's semen stains on it!

It was a Marriott in Connecticut and it just felt...greasy and the room had a bad energy.

This is all I got. It was my first trip to Paris a few years back. I was traveling with a friend who know the city fairly well. His advice was to not splurge on the hotel as we would be out and about seeing Paris all day. Which WAS true and the reason I can't come down too hard on the chosen hotel. It was one in the Ibis chain. The whole bathroom including the sink and toilet was the shower. The bedroom part must have been furnished by IKEA. No thermostat; the hotel controlled the temperature. It was in May but the days were warm and the room was a furnace. I lasted a week there and had a wonderful trip, but next time I'll spend a little more on accommodations.

I guess if you stay ijn those sort of Airbnbs

I have always stayed int ones that were more like corporate apartments-- investment properties people rented out that had hotel-like amenities.

Stayed in an air bnb and found out later that they watched me make doo doos in the shitter.

[quote] Anyone else too paranoid of Ring and security cameras in every room to ever use Airbnb?

I was before I started staying in them. AirBnB’s policy forbids cameras in bedrooms and bathrooms, and if they have a camera in other areas, they have to disclose before they accept to host you.

Sure, some might not follow the rules, but if they break the rules, they get banned. (Or potentially worse if it’s illegal in the jurisdiction). Getting yourself and any of your properties banned from AirBnB is a pretty big risk for those who use it as an often substantial income.

Also, you can check everything plugged into the wall to see if they have wired cables, and if you’re super paranoid, there’s an app you can get to find hidden cameras with your cell phone.

At the end of the day, if someone has gone through the trouble of rigging a camera and running the risk of losing their AirBnB privileges just to watch me hook up with a local rent boy or rub one out in the shower, I’m really not that bothered. Hope they enjoy it.

I learnt my lesson over the years: Avoid the quirky, alternative, or playful hotels. Go with the boring, decent business chains instead.

If it’s a cute guy running the BnB, I gladly rub one out while he’s watching.

Agreed Dutchie

In places where there are no nicer hotels or where said hotels are already booked I will always default to a Hampton Inn or Hilton Garden Inn.

Bland and corporate, but the rooms are almost always immaculate, the beds firm, the bathrooms clean and all I am doing at the hotel is sleeping and showering.

Plus there is plentiful free coffee, usually Starbucks, and coffee is the only thing I can manage in the morning anyway.

Indeed, R122 — add to that, that the wifi is usually reliable in "business hotels" and the guests are mostly quieter.

r81 Thanks! My attitude is, Life is a cabaret--might as well enjoy the show.

Re: Paris, I once stayed at what was probably the shittiest hotel in the 1st arrondissement, Le Lion d’Or. The shower above my room leaked and made my room stink of mildew, so I had to switch rooms. And when I brought a man up, the front desk phoned me about 20 minutes later - while we were fucking - and told me to kick him out. Ah mais dis donc!

The location was great though. It was right next door to one of the sleaziest gay bars in Paris, Le Transfert. Which is now gone, but the hotel is still there, and has apparently undergone a much-needed refresh.

I think I stayed in that same room ("suite"?!) last summer, R103! 😂

We used to take cross country trips with my dad. This was back in the days of the AAA travel books. No cell phones, so he'd go in and wheel and deal for a room. We would stay at some real dumps, but he could also be talked in to some luxury places sometimes. We learned to make deals with him. Two or three cheap-o places, then one luxury. I remember one place did have a bunch of bugs (pre bed-bugs, so these were just normal creepy-crawlys). One was on the bathroom door and I whacked it with a book (the Bible??) and the door flew open and my dad was sitting on the can.

I've had some good deals though. One time I booked a night for myself, my husband, and our two young kids at some Hilton in NYC. Near the Chrysler building and Grand Central. I booked it for one person, so it was like $97. We showed up, and the lady at the desk is like, I can't put all of you in this room. She gave us some high up room with a fancy balcony kind of thing, must've had two rooms (maybe a fold out couch for the kids?) and this HUGE bathroom. Kids ran a bath and were using the slanted side of the tub as a water slide, and got water everywhere. Beautiful room though.

I think we did pick up bedbugs at another Hilton in NYC. A Hilton Garden hotel.

We did stop at some place full of hookers and drug dealers while driving south to Florida. We didn't check in and they did give us our money back.

For the life of me I cannot understand what the heck R112 is talking about.

[quote]The Ritz Carlton in Paris.

There's a Ritz hotel in Paris, R25, but no Ritz Carlton (but I know you're joking).

We stayed at a cheap motel in South Lake Tahoe around six years ago. A kid was shot by a cop two doors down from us as he was trying to flee out a bathroom window. The cop said he thought the kid had fired a weapon. The kid was unarmed and wearing shorts and socks. As soon as the sun came up we hurried to our car but the cops stopped us to interview us as to what we had heard. My spouse said she heard one shot. We never heard what happened to the cop, but the kid died.

Below what price point should be a no-go for hotels in Western coutries? That would be helpful to try and avoid the shitty type of places described here.

Now my story. My father took me to NYC and then Disney World as a high school graduation gift. The last night of the trip (we were flying out of Miami to where we lived in Latin America) we had to book one of those hotels they advertize on the airport. Seeing that it was our last night of the trip my dad (who is not a cheapstake or spendrift, just right in the middle) booked one in Little Haiti, I think it was called Travel Lodge or something. OMG, the hotel tho not extremely awful or dirty as other stories here, made our skin crawl. The room had a strong smell of bug spray. Back then my parents had a timeshare membership (RCI I think it was) so we were used to the type of hotels that feature there: not the most luxurious, but good to great ones, so this hotel was bad for us.

[quote]Below what price point should be a no-go for hotels in Western coutries? That would be helpful to try and avoid the shitty type of places described here

That depends, R131. Big cities are a lot more expensive than small ones. A decent hotel in a great location in London UK is going to be a lot more expensive than one in Cleveland. As someone mentioned above, when in doubt, try to stick to the well known chain hotels.

The Barcelo Albatross in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. Whole place smelt of cat piss. The call for prayer could be heard from about six different mosques who all sounded like they were competing with each other. Whole place was full of rowdy Russians.

Lesson learned - only go 5* in Egypt.

Jolly Beach, Antigua. The sea was opaque and there were hummingbirds drinking from the soft drinks taps in the restaurant.

The Roach Motel

Roaches check in but they don't check out!

I think that in countries that aren't of the First World, one should only go to 5 star hotels. Like in India, Egypt, Mexico, Brazil, ALL of Africa, Nepal, Cambodia, etc.

In many cases a normal room in a 5 star hotel there will not go above 150-200 dollars. Well worth the relative extra expense.

I think r131 was asking how low is TOO low, price-wise.

It varies a lot; on a recent road trip through SoCal, I had a very nice $100 room and a horrible $150 room. It’s all about the location.

Rule of thumb for popular European city destinations: Don't go under €80 a night for HOTELS.

Quaint little b&b's is a different story, and especially in Greece, Southern Italy and parts of Spain you can have excellent, cozy accommodation with a lovely host cooking meals for as little as €20-30 per night.

But as for hotels… you are usually very safe around the €80 to €100 range.

The Hotel Pennsylvania owns this thread. They post 25 year old pictures on their website and trap unsuspecting tourists by the busload.

It’s gone R139. But I did have a very memorable tryst there…

Yes, a tawdry old place in the southwest decades ago, I forget the name unfortunately. But I definitely recall coming back to my room late-morning and running into the maid. She was washing the bathroom floor with her hair.

The original Crown & Anchor (before it was rebuilt because of a fire).

Small, dank, musty smelling room with stained carpets, no A/C, junky furniture, and plenty of noise from the surrounding restaurants till all hours. What a dumb.

We ended up checking out in the middle of the night. And there we were, trekking up Commercial Street with our steamer trunks, looking for a place to stay, like ordinary refugees.

R129 - I pointed this out at R41, dear.

A 4* in Cuba which promised an amazing beach and turquoise sea with a coral reef you could swim out to. Walked into the room and there were dead roaches all over the floor. All the food tasted of palm oil and the sea was too rough to swim in 4/7 days.

R143, thanks sweetie. I couldn't be bothered to read the whole thread.

The LaQuinta Inn in Salinas, CA. We were just too tired after driving and it was the only place we could find. There was a truck stop nearby and I think there was much prostitution happening. The carpeted floor was so dirty, the bottoms of my socks became black.

The Hotel Pennsylvania has had quite a past (from The Daily Telegraph):

When CIA operative Frank Olson checked into the Hotel Statler in Manhattan in 1953, the building was already past its glory days.

Once known as the Hotel Pennsylvania, it was more than 30 years old and had undergone renovations. But it was far from shabby, and thousands of visitors to New York stayed there every year, because of its proximity to transport, directly opposite Pennsylvania Station, and to some of the city’s biggest attractions, including Madison Square Gardens. It was also made famous by a song “Pennsylvania 6-5000”, which was the hotel’s phone number.

But Olson’s visit was not for pleasure. Several days earlier he had been to a meeting at Deep Creek Lake in Maryland. The meeting was held by his boss Sidney Gottlieb, a scientist with the CIA who was conducting a program of drug testing and mind control experiments called MK-Ultra. Gottlieb had laced a bottle of Cointreau with LSD and gave some to the men at the meeting. But Olson had a bad reaction, suffered a breakdown and asking to quit the chemical warfare program.

Sent to New York to see a psychiatrist he took a room at the Statler. But a week later he was dead, after crashing through a window on the 13th floor and plummeting to the ground. Ruled a suicide by the police, his family later received a settlement from the US government and apology from the president, but questions still remain about whether he was pushed.

Olson’s stay at the Statler was a low point but just one of the most intriguing stories in the history of this great hotel, which first opened its doors on January 25, 1919, a century ago today, as the Hotel Pennsylvania.

It was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad company on land it owned opposite the Pennsylvania Station, the main intercity railway station in New York, which had opened in 1910. The station brought a surge in the number of people arriving from other cities and states, so the railroad company decided to build a place for these people to stay. It commissioned McKim, Mead and White, the same architects who had built the station, to create a huge hotel. To manage it they brought in Ellsworth Milton Statler, a hotelier known for innovations. He was the first to build a hotel with a bath, shower and running water in every room.

Construction began in 1918 and it was opened in January 1919, to great fanfare. Statler gave a speech claiming to be the first man in the world to build a hotel “designed from the point of view of the guest”.

One of the innovations he included in the Pennsylvania was the “Servidor”, a revolving box allowing guests to put shoes or clothes out for cleaning, which could be collected and returned by staff without entering the guest’s room.

When it opened the Pennsylvania was the world’s largest hotel with 2200 rooms and the biggest lobby of any hotel anywhere. The hotel’s Cafe Rouge soon became a place for the rich and famous to be seen, playing host some of the best musicians and entertainers of the era.

In 1924 the hotel hosted a Spaniard named Joaquin Maria Argamasilla, who claimed to have X-ray vision.

Argamasilla gave demonstrations of his skill allegedly being able to read things placed in a special metal box. Unfortunately for him the great magician and escapologist Harry Houdini came to see the show and was quickly able to debunk Argamasilla’s claims.

Although the hotel opened shortly after Prohibition began there were notable occasions when alcohol flowed. Bootlegger and noted dandy Johnny “Jack” Nounes, head of Galveston’s Downtown Gang, held a lavish party there in the ’20s at which movie star Clara Bow took a dip in a champagne-filled bathtub. During the big band era some of the biggest names played at the Cafe Rouge, including the Glen Miller Band, which recorded the song Pennsylvania 6-5000, which was a huge hit in 1940.

In 1948 Statler bought the hotel outright from the Pennsylvania Railroad and renamed it The Statler in 1949. It remained a popular place for out-of-towners to stay. In 1959 (then known as the Statler Hilton) it hosted to Fidel Castro, the new leader of Cuba, when he was invited to speak at the UN. He hosted press conferences and meetings at the Statler.

In 1991 its name reverted to the Hotel Pennsylvania. Bought by the Vornado group in 1997, in 2007 they planned to demolish it to build a skyscraper. A public outcry stopped the wrecking ball but the hotel’s future remains uncertain.

[quote]I have yet to stay in an Airbnb with "security cameras in every room" [R102]

How do you know with any certainty, R104?

I haven't read anything here about hotels in Japan. Do they not have any AWFUL hotels?

Can’t speak for Japan, still on my bucket list to visit, but even the lesser hotels in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia have all been great.

The Asians take it very serious.

A cheap run-down small hotel in Vegas in the mid-90s. Early days for Internet travel, I think the admin at work booked it through some travel agency. Looked around on streetview and can't remember the name but I think it was at the end of the Fremont St Experience (not the El Cortez but in same area). Free gun safe in each room but need a $20 deposit for a tv remote from the grumpy guy at the front desk. At least the exposed concrete block walls made the room feel a bit safer. Fun times.

.,.,

Any property with the Trump name on it. Fortunately there are fewer and fewer these days.

I stayed in a hotel in Manila that was was like something out of a movie. Built in 1981, it would have been a swish, glossy affair with a glass atrium down the center. The problem was no-one had maintained it for over 20 years. The atrium was full of dead plants, the lifts were all broken, the railings had fallen off the stairs. In my once-glamourous room, the showerhead was a giant green mass of lime scale - I had to chip it off to get a decent amount of water through. At night I could hear multiple mice in the walls. But the really crazy thing was the staff were INSANELY polite, kind and professionally dressed, truly some of the best hotel service I have ever received. Nothing was too much trouble and the kitchen would cook what I wanted and bring it to my room.

I went back again a year later - just to see if it had changed - and the staff remembered my name and had a "welcome back" dessert tray waiting for me!

Ha, goes to show it really is all about people who make or break the place, R155

I once had to sleep in a Ritz-Carlton.

Does a motel count? Run down one in Forks, Wa. Something similar to the one in "Vacancy". The pool had green water and birds floating in it.

Now go watch "Vacancy". If you dare.

for anyone reading this--it's 2022 now.

Try to avoid using expedia or discount sites for booking. Use them to find some potential hotels and then book directly with the hotel itself. You'll get a better room at the same price. Even if it's $10 or $20 more per night, it will make a difference in the room you get.

And before you book, go to Yelp and look at recent photos. Yes, there will be one star reviews with pissed off customers at any hotel but you'll get a sense of the hotel's condition. I'd be fine paying for a hotel with reviews claiming the staff was rude or room service took forever. I would avoid a hotel with bedbugs recently. Hotels, like real estate, take glamour photos that may not relate well to the actual experience of being there. the customer photos are generally accurate

I’ll get back to you in a minute. There’s a knock on the door

I’ll be back in a minute. There’s a knock at the door.

The St. Francis in San Francisco, in 1984. I felt like I was on The Love Boat! But the bearded manager, Peter, was hot AF (though probably gay).

The Best Western in Aberdeen, WA.

Knight's Inn gave my bf a fungus he never got rid of

Aberdeen, Wa. is horrible. You win.

When I was a legal gayling, I would Comet hotel bath tubs and take hot baths. Knowing what I know now, I would cringe at the thought. I recently stayed at a Marriot Courtyard hotel and the toilet had fecal matter sprayed on the bottom of the seat. They don't clean hotel rooms properly. On the plus side, Marriot has the best shampoo there. Makes your hair soft and thick. It's called 39 Degrees North.

R159 that’s a good tip, and it makes sense. We are all so programmed go hunt for bargains, that we tend to forget the mantra “you get what you pay for”.

Lodgings in Paris in July. Saying it was like an oven is an understatement. The beds looked like they had been brought in from an army barracks, and the blankets too. The piece de la resistance, however, was the wheelie bins in the corridors. Très convenient. A beautiful aroma of rotting food filled the halls. My friend cut his toe open on the last day on the sharp metal corner of one of the beds. He went for a tetanus.

The Landmark in LA. Nice people, clean rooms. Went to bed and felt like death. - J. Lyn Joplin (tasteless, I know. Now you know as well)

I was just at a Wyndham. When I got to my room, I discovered the door was wide open. But nothing was been disturbed, so whatever.

But then I couldn’t get the door to close. When I reported the issue to the front desk, the clerk said, “But you’re okay with that, right?”

This thread makes me want to watch Carry On Abroad. Now that featured a hotel to make any Datalounger storm off, their caftan billowing in the breeze.

"We are all so programmed go hunt for bargains,"

Traveling to any large or mid-sized American city and paying $60/night for a hotel room, then getting pissed off because it's a roach infested dump is pretty fucking disingenuous.

Absolutely.

LOL-ing at all the comments about Circus Circus. It's marketed as the only "family-friendly" hotel on the Strip and has a janky indoor amusement park. Just the thought of it is horrifying.

[quote]Is the Carter Hotel still there?

It closed in 2014, but a developer bought it a few months ago with plans to renovate it into a habitable hotel.

I've never in a stayed in a hotel, I've only cleaned them, lol. That's the pathetic truth.

Hookers, a guy on meth with blazing red eyes descending a staircase, a dirty hot tub, poor lighting, and possibly scabies.

Yes but not stayed in it. It's been closed for quite a while. After WW2, Stuttgart repurposed some of it's bunkers. The target group were mostly men who were in town on a business trip. The low ceilings and the absence of light make you feel like in a submarine. I've been down there because one big Bunkerhotel is located directly under the place where the Christmas market is held and they were pulling the cables through the underground corridors. Oh and most of the walls are covered in black mould now. You shouldn't spend much time there.

R20 I recognise that place! I stayed there when I went to NYC in 2003, it was all I could afford. It had lots of roaches but good free Wifi. Room was tiny but cleanish for the price, I was out all the time so it was good enough

Yes. Stayed with my sister and niece and nephew at the former Nickelodeon hotel in Orlando to take the kids to Disney. Awful! Nothing to eat on the entire premises but chicken nuggets and fries. Screaming kids running around a 1950s style motel with paper thin walls all hours of the night. They had a pool where you could get could get “slimed” and I don’t know what they put in the water but it took like three shampoos to get the grease out of my niece’s hair. Disgusting. The kids liked it because it had paintings of Nickelodeon characters and bunkbeds in the room. I think it’s still open but not as a themed hotel.

The bellboy who delivered a missing bag to my room, had ejaculate on his uniform’s left arm.

R181 you should have offered to provide some to match on his uniform's right arm

Stayed at a budget-type inn in Japan (IIRC, a "minshuku"). My friend and I were the only gaijin (foreigners) staying there. My friend was starting to irritate me, being a know-it-all, and at the same time, leaving all the "work" of being in a foreign country to me (communicating to people with my very rudimentary Japanese skills).

Anyway, this little inn had squat toilets only, no western toilets. I didn't think to explain to my friend that when you squat, you face the flushing apparatus (you sit in the opposite direction as you would on a western toilet).

I get in the bathroom and it's a mess. (I won't get into detail, but it was obvious that *someone* had squatted in the opposite direction and had missed the mark, somehow.)

I confronted my friend about it and he denied making a mess in there. I told him: you and I are the only foreigners in here and it wasn't me.