Have never stayed in a shitty hotel before too be honest I always get a decent one.....However when we went to the cousins wedding out of town in Toronto it was open bar and apparently my brother found me passed out in the bathroom there and I woke up in a hotel....
My absolute worst was getting stuck in the shitty motel that the airline will pay for if you have a flight cancellation that leaves you stranded overnight.
This happened with US Air in Charlotte. Never get stuck with a late evening flight through Charlotte, if you have any other option...
So I don't recall the name of the place, but the rack rate (i.e. the maximum legal limit they can charge, despite NOBODY ever actually paying that amount) was only $50.
I think the airline overnight rate actually had a contract with the place for $20 per room.
Needless to say, it was a total dump.
Like, the kind of place where you'd rather take a barefoot shower in a truck stop than set foot in the bathroom without shoes on.
It amazes me that bed bugs weren't involved, so they at least have that to their credit.
Second worst was some Best Western in downtown Atlanta, when my dad and I were interviewing colleges during my junior year of high school.
It's located somewhere in the vicinity of the Five Points MARTA stop, which isn't a great area now, but in the late 90's was legitimately scary. (had at least one friend get mugged in that station freshman year of college)
So that sort of sets the stage... where it gets bad is that there was almost certainly a series of hookers working the room next door.
There was CONTINUAL pounding of a headboard against the wall, for the entire time that we were in the motel, with about a 15 minute break every hour to hour-and-a-half.
I can't say I've had bad experiences. I've had bad hotels/motels near the beach, built after the war but not really maintained since the 80s..., but mostly when I was a student and could only afford the cheapest in town so it was somewhat expected.
One night in Toronto for a political convention, the bed headboard was actually held in place by a piece of wood screwed to the wall (the headboard itself was not screwed) and it fell on our head... I wasn't paying the hotel bill and we were young and drunk so it was actually a lot of fun!
In Cuba we had a room in a "3 star" hotel, and there were lots of bugs in the room. But the doors had large gaps at the bottom kind of like a door inside your house, but this was the exterior door. I didn't mind much until I found dozens of woodlice in the bed... that was freshly made that morning, so I kept wondering how fast those little bugs got there and how many would visit us while we'd be sleeping... and there were a lot of large spiders in the bathroom, and only cold water for the shower (although being a Canadian I would say it was really more lukewarm than cold).
In Abuja (no, not on vacation!) I went to the Hilton hotel as it was the only safe place, and all the light switches I could find did not work. It was pitch dark as we got there late the first night. I ended up finding a lamp on a desk and then I could find my way in the room. Near the window, there was a floor lamp and the switch was a large button attached to the cord, on the floor. Except it seems someone may have stepped on it a little too hard, and every time I wanted to turn the light on or off, there were sparks coming out of the button's sides...
Bugs, spiders, cockroaches, unclean sheets, toilet/shower not separated, driftwood found in toilet, unsanitary water, no water heater. And it was the best hotel on the island. I was there for 10 days.
When I was coming up to visit you earlier in the year, I found a really cheap place outside of Nashville to sleep after the first leg of my journey. It was pouring out and when I got to my room the door was wide open.
Terrified I looked around and didn't see anyone, so I did my best to tell myself I would be fine. Tried to close the door but it wouldn't stay closed and the locking mechanism was busted. I put the chain up and went to bed, hoping I woke up the next morning.
I was never heard from again. Some say I'm still haunting that hotel.
I had this happen to me. My now wife lived a ways away back then, so to see her, we'd meet half-way on weekends. And then I did 1099 IT work for a few years, so I was always driving. Anyways, the door latch was broke and would open with a good push. This was a motel (Door to the outside), so when I got into the room, I kept calling myself a panicked wussy, but I still checked behind the shower curtain to make sure there was no one in there.
I try my hardest, but I might have a lot of bad luck with things sometimes. Staying at my third AirBNB (technically second since the first cancelled and left me without anywhere to stay), and I get a message while I'm out at the bar that the roommate has been asked to leave and that the place may not be safe. It's reassuring to the landlord that I'll be staying the night though. Not quite what I signed up for, but I guess this is how these things work? It's no hooker hotel in Long Island, but I might feel even less safe.
I got refused service at several hotels in China (including one in a nice part of Shanghai) despite having a reservation because I'm a laowai, resulting in a huge headache to find a new hotel on the same day.
Stayed at a really nice hotel on vacation in Phnom Penh once and it was the one and only time I've gotten bedbugs.. that sucked. Usually I go under the "you get what you pay" for philosophy when evaluating accommodations, but that was a pretty expensive place. The itching was maddening and lasted almost a week.
The best hotel I ever stayed at when traveling internationally for business was either the Conrad Hong Kong or Mandarin Oriental in Singapore.
My story isn't great but it's part of the history of my wife and I, so hear we go.
When we were married (back in 2005) we decided to have a honeymoon in Walt Disney World. We stayed in a savannah room in Animal Kingdom Lodge which, if you're unaware, allows you to walk out on your balcony and see various animals in one of the Disney habitats, including giraffes, whose heads are about as high of the bottom floor. At that time I was as software engineer in a very small company and all three of us (the owner, myself and another engineer) did all of the work, from writing customer, custom code, to installation and training.
Well, we had a couple of installations that needed to be done in Nebraska and in a small town called Crested Butte, CO. My boss told me "If you can install and train these two towns, should be less than two days worth of work, you and your wife can fly out to Colorado, have fun and stay as long as you like. I'll cover 100% of your expenses." Nice! We got a double-honeymoon, and half of it was on my bosses dime!
Disney World was amazing, and we stayed a couple days in Denver and a few days in Crested Butte which is absolutely gorgeous and nestled in the Colorado Rockies. These were all excellent experiences that we love and cherish... it was the the part of the trip that involved Nebraska that went down in infamy.
Since I frequently had to stay in hotels with my work, I often used Hotwire to book hotels which doesn't give you the name of the hotel until you've booked. However, the problem that I had with this trip was that I was going to have to work in a very small town (I can't even recall the name of it) which meant our hotel options were very limited. So, I book the only hotel option through Hotwire within an hours drive of the tiny town.
After Disney World. we fly out from that wonderful and amazing experience, we land in Denver in the late-afternoon in one of the hottest summers on record for that area, get our rental, get a late dinner and basically book it to the middle-of-no-where Nebraska. We eventually find Brush, NE which was suppose to be the town of our hotel. I can't remember the name of the chain but on Hotwire it was branded as something moderately knowable and I trusted it would be a decent hotel. I wasn't expecting a Hilton, but just a moderate, decent place.
Well, we get to Brush and I can't find the hotel. This shouldn't have been hard because it's the middle of no where and Brush seems to be no more than a stop sign in the middle of the dessert. I pull into a motel just to ask for directions because, honestly, it was the only place open. I never once assumed it was my hotel because it had no branding as being a chain motel of any form. I get out of the car, go into the office and my wife is sitting in the car, totally skeezed out by the place as she's watching me talk to the guy. She see's me ask a question... she see's a look of mild shock... a frown on my face... and then I pull out my wallet. Yup, this was the place-- the only place, to stay where we were and there wasn't another option within hours of driving.
We had to stay in a hot, broken down, roach infested falling apart hotel in the middle of no where. The only good thing was that in spite of those problems, I didn't feel unsafe. It just seemed like an old hotel that was getting by and the proprietors simply didn't care to keep it up because they didn't have to since they were the only option for miles and miles.
My wife, however, didn't feel as safe as I did. She was up half the night, skeered and upset-- we'd just came from the "most magical place on earth"... to this. We had an amazing two-week honeymoon, however, smack in the middle of that experience was the dirtiest hotel night we've ever experienced.
When I was coming up to visit you earlier in the year, I found a really cheap place outside of Nashville to sleep after the first leg of my journey. It was pouring out and when I got to my room the door was wide open.
Terrified I looked around and didn't see anyone, so I did my best to tell myself I would be fine. Tried to close the door but it wouldn't stay closed and the locking mechanism was busted. I put the chain up and went to bed, hoping I woke up the next morning.
I was never heard from again. Some say I'm still haunting that hotel.
That's what happens when you don't call a friend who lives near Nashville and ask to stay with them!
Went with my friend to Virginia for Super Smash Con this year. Stayed at a hotel that was less than a 5 minute drive from the venue. It was decently priced (not super cheap) so I figured it wouldn't be that bad.
Easily one of the grossest hotels I'd been to. You had to pay extra money to have the cleaning people come, and it didn't look like they even cleaned the room before we got in there. There were trash cans that still had garbage in them from who knows when, and at one point I lost my keys and had to look under the bed. BIG MISTAKE. The wifi was so bad that we couldn't watch netflix/twitch at all without it buffering every 2 seconds, even in the lowest quality.
I guess that's not the worst hotel experience I've ever had, because when I was a kid we stopped at a motel on our way to Disney World and there was someone murdered a few doors down lol
I guess that's not the worst hotel experience I've ever had, because when I was a kid we stopped at a motel on our way to Disney World and there was someone murdered a few doors down lol
OMG!! Horrible. As a kid our hotel room in WI Dells was robbed and I thought that was horrible.....Nothing like yours.
I guess that's not the worst hotel experience I've ever had, because when I was a kid we stopped at a motel on our way to Disney World and there was someone murdered a few doors down lol
OMG!! Horrible. As a kid our hotel room in WI Dells was robbed and I thought that was horrible.....Nothing like yours.
To be honest, I didn't know about it until much, much later. My parents told me that when they turned on the local news station in the morning, there were TV reporters at the motel covering the murder. I wasn't even aware of it at the time, but I was probably like 7 and playing my Game Boy so I don't think I would have been aware of much anyway lol. Needless to say we got out of there in a hurry.
Worst thing I've dealt with was a Knights Inn in KY that was run by folks who must have just got to the country as their english wasn't good. No sooner had we stepped in to check in then you could hear them yelling at each other and then the room next to ours was being remodeled until 10 at night. I don't think we've had any worse stories than that thankfully.
Comments
That's some nasty stuff.
This happened with US Air in Charlotte. Never get stuck with a late evening flight through Charlotte, if you have any other option...
So I don't recall the name of the place, but the rack rate (i.e. the maximum legal limit they can charge, despite NOBODY ever actually paying that amount) was only $50.
I think the airline overnight rate actually had a contract with the place for $20 per room.
Needless to say, it was a total dump.
Like, the kind of place where you'd rather take a barefoot shower in a truck stop than set foot in the bathroom without shoes on.
It amazes me that bed bugs weren't involved, so they at least have that to their credit.
Second worst was some Best Western in downtown Atlanta, when my dad and I were interviewing colleges during my junior year of high school.
It's located somewhere in the vicinity of the Five Points MARTA stop, which isn't a great area now, but in the late 90's was legitimately scary. (had at least one friend get mugged in that station freshman year of college)
So that sort of sets the stage... where it gets bad is that there was almost certainly a series of hookers working the room next door.
There was CONTINUAL pounding of a headboard against the wall, for the entire time that we were in the motel, with about a 15 minute break every hour to hour-and-a-half.
Somebody was making some money...
One night in Toronto for a political convention, the bed headboard was actually held in place by a piece of wood screwed to the wall (the headboard itself was not screwed) and it fell on our head... I wasn't paying the hotel bill and we were young and drunk so it was actually a lot of fun!
In Cuba we had a room in a "3 star" hotel, and there were lots of bugs in the room. But the doors had large gaps at the bottom kind of like a door inside your house, but this was the exterior door. I didn't mind much until I found dozens of woodlice in the bed... that was freshly made that morning, so I kept wondering how fast those little bugs got there and how many would visit us while we'd be sleeping... and there were a lot of large spiders in the bathroom, and only cold water for the shower (although being a Canadian I would say it was really more lukewarm than cold).
In Abuja (no, not on vacation!) I went to the Hilton hotel as it was the only safe place, and all the light switches I could find did not work. It was pitch dark as we got there late the first night. I ended up finding a lamp on a desk and then I could find my way in the room. Near the window, there was a floor lamp and the switch was a large button attached to the cord, on the floor. Except it seems someone may have stepped on it a little too hard, and every time I wanted to turn the light on or off, there were sparks coming out of the button's sides...
Bugs, spiders, cockroaches, unclean sheets, toilet/shower not separated, driftwood found in toilet, unsanitary water, no water heater. And it was the best hotel on the island. I was there for 10 days.
When I was coming up to visit you earlier in the year, I found a really cheap place outside of Nashville to sleep after the first leg of my journey. It was pouring out and when I got to my room the door was wide open.
Terrified I looked around and didn't see anyone, so I did my best to tell myself I would be fine. Tried to close the door but it wouldn't stay closed and the locking mechanism was busted. I put the chain up and went to bed, hoping I woke up the next morning.
I was never heard from again. Some say I'm still haunting that hotel.
I had this happen to me. My now wife lived a ways away back then, so to see her, we'd meet half-way on weekends. And then I did 1099 IT work for a few years, so I was always driving. Anyways, the door latch was broke and would open with a good push. This was a motel (Door to the outside), so when I got into the room, I kept calling myself a panicked wussy, but I still checked behind the shower curtain to make sure there was no one in there.
and were you ever heard from again?
Sorry. I'm dead.
~The Further Travels of SGP
Stayed at a really nice hotel on vacation in Phnom Penh once and it was the one and only time I've gotten bedbugs.. that sucked. Usually I go under the "you get what you pay" for philosophy when evaluating accommodations, but that was a pretty expensive place. The itching was maddening and lasted almost a week.
The best hotel I ever stayed at when traveling internationally for business was either the Conrad Hong Kong or Mandarin Oriental in Singapore.
When we were married (back in 2005) we decided to have a honeymoon in Walt Disney World. We stayed in a savannah room in Animal Kingdom Lodge which, if you're unaware, allows you to walk out on your balcony and see various animals in one of the Disney habitats, including giraffes, whose heads are about as high of the bottom floor. At that time I was as software engineer in a very small company and all three of us (the owner, myself and another engineer) did all of the work, from writing customer, custom code, to installation and training.
Well, we had a couple of installations that needed to be done in Nebraska and in a small town called Crested Butte, CO. My boss told me "If you can install and train these two towns, should be less than two days worth of work, you and your wife can fly out to Colorado, have fun and stay as long as you like. I'll cover 100% of your expenses." Nice! We got a double-honeymoon, and half of it was on my bosses dime!
Disney World was amazing, and we stayed a couple days in Denver and a few days in Crested Butte which is absolutely gorgeous and nestled in the Colorado Rockies. These were all excellent experiences that we love and cherish... it was the the part of the trip that involved Nebraska that went down in infamy.
Since I frequently had to stay in hotels with my work, I often used Hotwire to book hotels which doesn't give you the name of the hotel until you've booked. However, the problem that I had with this trip was that I was going to have to work in a very small town (I can't even recall the name of it) which meant our hotel options were very limited. So, I book the only hotel option through Hotwire within an hours drive of the tiny town.
After Disney World. we fly out from that wonderful and amazing experience, we land in Denver in the late-afternoon in one of the hottest summers on record for that area, get our rental, get a late dinner and basically book it to the middle-of-no-where Nebraska. We eventually find Brush, NE which was suppose to be the town of our hotel. I can't remember the name of the chain but on Hotwire it was branded as something moderately knowable and I trusted it would be a decent hotel. I wasn't expecting a Hilton, but just a moderate, decent place.
Well, we get to Brush and I can't find the hotel. This shouldn't have been hard because it's the middle of no where and Brush seems to be no more than a stop sign in the middle of the dessert. I pull into a motel just to ask for directions because, honestly, it was the only place open. I never once assumed it was my hotel because it had no branding as being a chain motel of any form. I get out of the car, go into the office and my wife is sitting in the car, totally skeezed out by the place as she's watching me talk to the guy. She see's me ask a question... she see's a look of mild shock... a frown on my face... and then I pull out my wallet. Yup, this was the place-- the only place, to stay where we were and there wasn't another option within hours of driving.
We had to stay in a hot, broken down, roach infested falling apart hotel in the middle of no where. The only good thing was that in spite of those problems, I didn't feel unsafe. It just seemed like an old hotel that was getting by and the proprietors simply didn't care to keep it up because they didn't have to since they were the only option for miles and miles.
My wife, however, didn't feel as safe as I did. She was up half the night, skeered and upset-- we'd just came from the "most magical place on earth"... to this. We had an amazing two-week honeymoon, however, smack in the middle of that experience was the dirtiest hotel night we've ever experienced.
When I was coming up to visit you earlier in the year, I found a really cheap place outside of Nashville to sleep after the first leg of my journey. It was pouring out and when I got to my room the door was wide open.
Terrified I looked around and didn't see anyone, so I did my best to tell myself I would be fine. Tried to close the door but it wouldn't stay closed and the locking mechanism was busted. I put the chain up and went to bed, hoping I woke up the next morning.
I was never heard from again. Some say I'm still haunting that hotel.
That's what happens when you don't call a friend who lives near Nashville and ask to stay with them!
Easily one of the grossest hotels I'd been to. You had to pay extra money to have the cleaning people come, and it didn't look like they even cleaned the room before we got in there. There were trash cans that still had garbage in them from who knows when, and at one point I lost my keys and had to look under the bed. BIG MISTAKE. The wifi was so bad that we couldn't watch netflix/twitch at all without it buffering every 2 seconds, even in the lowest quality.
I guess that's not the worst hotel experience I've ever had, because when I was a kid we stopped at a motel on our way to Disney World and there was someone murdered a few doors down lol
I guess that's not the worst hotel experience I've ever had, because when I was a kid we stopped at a motel on our way to Disney World and there was someone murdered a few doors down lol
OMG!! Horrible. As a kid our hotel room in WI Dells was robbed and I thought that was horrible.....Nothing like yours.
I guess that's not the worst hotel experience I've ever had, because when I was a kid we stopped at a motel on our way to Disney World and there was someone murdered a few doors down lol
OMG!! Horrible. As a kid our hotel room in WI Dells was robbed and I thought that was horrible.....Nothing like yours.
To be honest, I didn't know about it until much, much later. My parents told me that when they turned on the local news station in the morning, there were TV reporters at the motel covering the murder. I wasn't even aware of it at the time, but I was probably like 7 and playing my Game Boy so I don't think I would have been aware of much anyway lol. Needless to say we got out of there in a hurry.