Help find the worst hotel in the world

Iain Dale has started something. He may not yet be fully aware of it, but he has.

On his blog he provides a tremendous Blackpool story (you'll have to go see).

My own favourite was told to me by Peter Lilley. After a failed attempt to enter the communal bathroom at his hotel he asked the landlady for the key. She replied: "Bath night's Friday". When Peter protested "But today is Sunday!", she said:"Didn't you wash before you came?"

On another occasion I bumped into Sarah Biffen who was asking whether anyone had 50p in change so that she and John could watch their coin-operated television.

But you may have a better bad hotel story from anywhere in the world.

A Comment Central prize for the person who provides the best tale.

Comments

[Candadai Tirumalai]

This transpired more than half a century ago. An Englishman with a very cultivated accent telephoned the receptionist at his New York hotel to ask what he should do to be called in the morning (he had to catch an early flight) and she replied, "Gee, aren't you cold enough yet?" It was winter.

[Ben]

I stayed in a real dive in Hong Kong which was advertised as having an ensuite shower - this turned out to be a bidet, which the hotel owner was adamant you could stand in and hold the hose up in the air to clean yourself. I checked out shortly after arrival...

[neil]

A few years ago at the Sheraton (Amsterdam Airport), I was surprised to find my lavatory seat covered in a substance resembling glue. It turned out an employee should have stayed in the room as part of a "knowing the customer experience" programme. In the end, he was put in a different room, but a practical joker colleague didn't know this when doctoring the toilet seat. It took three months and endless letters to get an apology from the hotel

[James]

The Paris Hilton. So many guests passing through, dirty, drugs, criminals, trashy decor, dreadful stupid managment and you've got no idea what you might catch by sleeping there.

[Toby]

January 2003 - The Redroof Inn - Busch Gardens - Tampa Bay, Florida. The first room I was given already had people staying in it. They weren't as surprised as I was when I walked in on them (a hooker and her John). The front desk didn't believe me and they had to look for themselves. The second room I tried smelled like death mixed with stale cigar smoke and bleach. They offered me a third room, but I had none of that. I decided to stay some where far away from the city. Still, five years later upon walking into some bars I get flashbacks from the smell. I almost need to puke sometimes.

[Jonathan]

Staying in a small Jerusalem hotel close to the Old City a few years ago we told the owner that the TV in our room didn't work. His reply: "You're here to see the sights, why do you need a TV?"

[FTE]

I used to work in a youth hostel in central London, one of those for backpackers, every single night especially during the summer we used to have lots of people coming to reception nearly naked to complain and show us their body after being bitten for bed bugs, there were lots and lots of them, no matter how many times they sprayed their rooms they were still there, you could sometimes being bitten just walking on the corridors. What is however really amazing it's that after years of having the same problem this is still one of the biggest and busiest hostel in London.

[Jerry Dandridge]

"The Paris Hilton. So many guests passing through, dirty, drugs, criminals, trashy decor, dreadful stupid managment and you've got no idea what you might catch by sleeping there."

Was he talking about the hotel or the person?

[Dee]

A friend and I became lost in a rural part of North Florida late one night. We came across a small mom and pop motel about 1:00 in the morning and decided to stop for the night and get a fresh start in the morning.

The room looked clean but was very old and very worn. We crawled into bed and turned off the lights. A few minutes later we started hearing little noises.

We flipped on the light and about 20 mice scattered across the room and disappeared.

We then agreed there would be no sleeping that night and flipped the tv on. The brazen little things began filing back in the room one by one and we spent the the next couple hours swatting them with towels to keep them away from the bed.

Needless to say, we did not get back under the covers either.....

[Alan]

My daughter's a receptionist for a major hotel chain.
When a guest was found dead in the room one morning, she had to complete the bill before his credit card was cancelled. Only afterward was the ambulance called.

[Lee Jakeman]

I once stayed in the five star Imperial Hotel in Delhi, India, for just a single night. The room was, unusually, on the ground floor, backing on to the very substantial gardens. I woke up in the middle of the night, hearing a "squeak, squeak" noise which I thought might be a mouse. When I switched the lights on, I found that there were two rats in my room, walking along the opposite skirting board. The light disturbed them slightly, so they sauntered along to where they'd obviously come in, through the tiny hole in the wall where the radiator pipe came into the room from somewhere outside(God knows how they manage to get through such small holes). I went to the main reception desk and told them about the rats. They LAUGHED! They did inspect the room, by which time the rats had gone, of course. They then told me, still laughing, "if they come back again, call us and we'll come and kill them". So I went back to my room, wondering how I was going to last the night. Being India, I decided to do as the Indians do - i.e. improvise. I tore strips from my copy of the Indian Express and I STUFFED that hole in the wall as solidly as I could with the paper. Then, incredibly, I went back to sleep. The rats didn't come in again, although they surely could have gnawed through that paper in no time at all? I was young then - and tolerant beyond belief.

[wally]

neil, you were talking about the hotel not the person right?

[Tina Rhea]

A young woman trying to be tolerant in a Third World hotel finally asked the manager why there were so many bugs in the bed. Answer: "Because they're not safe on the floor."

[George]

I stayed at a hotel (I think I deliberately forgot the name) about 10 minutes' walk away from the Gard du Nord in Paris with three friends at the beginning of our gap year. Getting to the hotel was a nerve-wracking experience, having to discreetly squeeze past drug dealers and 'youth' along the narrow street, all of whose eyes followed us quietly as we went by.

Finding the hotel we were aiming for closed (a bad sign, you might have thought), we checked into one just down the road. The guy sitting in a chair in the front room, who we assumed was a receptionist of sorts, took our money in advance (we were too tired to argue) and told us to go to the very top of the rickety stairs (it must have been 6 floors or so) to a large room. He was unsure how many beds there were in there but, he said reassuringly, there was another mattress we could take up if there weren't enough (at this, he gestured to a mattress leaning against the bins in the courtyard behind the hotel).

As we walked into our room, we were not entirely surprised to see that it had apparently not been cleaned. In fact, this is a bit of an understatement. The mattresses (of which there were enough, thankfully) were bare, like the lightbulbs, and the floor was strewn with what appeared to be the luggage of a current occupant. We were less than relieved when on closer examination the bags turned out to have belonged to a former occupant who had left in a hurry. They had been slashed open with a knife and their non-valuable contents dumped on the floor in a pile.

Ignoring this, ignoring fleas, ignoring the fact that there wasn't a loo in the place that didn't appear to have been dropped from a great height and ignoring the skittering noises from the corner, we fell asleep quickly and left as soon as it was light.

[Lola Kass]

Hands down Prince William Hotel in London. Filthy, small, dangerous, nothing worked, the most un-comfortable beds.

[Peter]

Staying at a four star hotel in Peking one Summer, I noticed smoke pouring in my air conditioning duct. It was from the whole corridor of rooms used by local heavy smokers. The hotel's way to end my complaining was to seal off the duct with tape, making it unbearably hot!

[Bill]

Last summer, my singing partner and I were doing a little tour through the southeast. After a late gig in Huntsville, Alabama, we drove for an hour or so to get closer to the next day's venue in Mobile. We stopped for the night at a Day's Inn somewhere off the interstate. The place should've been called Seen Better Day's Inn. Everything was in disrepair, and there was a faint odor of perspiration and onions that permeated the place.

We settled in our twin beds with the lumpy mattresses and turned on the cable TV. A few minutes later, we watched in horror as a cockroach the size of a small child's shoe crawled out lazily from behind the TV onto the wall, then jumped onto the carpet. It seemed to fix us with a sentient gaze, then started creeping toward us. My partner screamed and threw her pillow at it. The cockroach actually dodged the pillow, and kept coming. It would've been impossible to kill the thing with a shoe. Then all it once, it sped under the bed. That was it. We hastily packed up our stuff, checked out and got our money back. The desk clerk didn't seem surprised. We found a slightly less scary motel down the road. But our dreams were haunted that night, and for several thereafter, by the cockroach.

[Jan]

When me and a couple of friends of mine, went to Pension Noya On the Rambla next to the central P.za Catalunya in Barcelona, we had no idea that we had to face up in a straight fight with tiger sized cockroachs in a room wich had just a tiny window looking on a black well, a sort of a fourth dimension. Then we discovered that you could go for finding mushrooms in the bathtub that was so next to the water closet that you had to carry out your needs sidelong. The best things about the night we slept there, weren't just the blood looking stains upon the walls, but the hallucinations brought by the bug spray we spreaded into the room to win the battle against the invaders and the melting temperature reached during that night (it was July).

[Olivia]

The George in Norwich.
We were woken up by a cleaning lady, begging us to check out early. When we told her to go away she said 'Aw please, I wan't to get off early today, you've slept in enough!"
On checking out, the rather camp male receptionist said to my boyfried 'Ah, I see Sir has finally managed to get his trousers back on.' Apparently he had seen my other half at the urinal in the restaurant bathroon the previous evening.
I was gobsmacked!

[Patsy Prince]

Ahh.....so many hotels and so little time but two are especially
memorable:
The Blackpool B & B whereupon checking in we discovered that the champagne bucket left half full of water was to catch the drips from the leaking roof as it poured down all night and the fantastic hotel in Africa where when we found
a tarantula in the room we were told to "pick it up and put it in your mouth, when they're warm, they usually go to sleep."
er...no thanks!

[Cosmo Spleen]

A few years back, I stayed in a hotel in Bombay with a colleague. It was late and we were the last guys in the indoor hotel bar, which had a thatched roof. We suddenly heard a rustling in the thatch, and saw a tail. My friend said to the bar man "I'm pretty sure there is an uninvited guest up there, is it a rat?" The reply was "Oh no sir, not a rat...just a country member!"

[Jack Malvern]

The cheapest hotel I ever stayed in was in Bikaner, in Rajasthan in northern India. The 40 rupee (80 pence) charge included a room with empty bottles under the bed, a small collection of cockroaches that died in the night on the bedroom floor, rats in the courtyard and a bucket of cold water that served as a shower. All very character-building.

[Incredulous]

Have you all gone mad?

I'm sure I'll get attacked for this, but I think the content in this blog has generally been appalling. Rooms full of rats. Cockroaches and bedbugs I get-but some of the experiences have been trifling and mediocre. I mean-you get what you pay for right. And some of the comments about not finding absolute perfection in "Third World" hotels and "Africa" (which country would that be on the continent?) are laughable. I hope that something was learned when you people were forced to spend (terror, shock, horror!) one night outside of your ivory towers-then again-what am I saying-people living in a thousand times worse conditions must be an alien concept to you, so you probably didn't learn anything at all. Funny anecdotes are one thing, glib ignorance is another.

[Natalie]

After a 7 hour journey in a highly uncomfortable wooden boat down the Mekong River in Laos, we were deposited at Pak Beng for our night stopover before continuing down the river for another 7 hours the following day. Unfortunately the hotel we we ushered into was, unsurprisingly, awful. Mosquito nets with holes I could hang myself through (and believe me, I wanted to!), a bed with one heavily stained and threadbare sheet, a stinking toilet complete with a persistent buzz of flies and some dubious matter on the floor, no electricity therefore no fan, a receptionist who tried to sell us drugs before getting his local friend the policeman to try and arrest us, and then, after Id finally fallen asleep, I awoke in the middle of the night to scurrying noises and a strange sensation on my leg. When I shone my torch, there was a rat the size of a jack russell balancing on my foot. Thankfully, the 6 bottles of Beer Lao I'd consumed for my dinner that evening numbed any sense of impending doom that I may have had and I fell right back to sleep. Good times.

[andy naylor]

most secure... the hotel in kuta beech bali where the front desk suggests you put your valuables in the large lockable cupboard... that had no back on it.... or the hotel in legaspi philippines that had an air conditioner front, but no actual cooler, just a gaping hole with easy access to the fire escape.

[Lee Jakeman]

To Incredulous: You're dead right - you ARE going to be attacked for what you wrote. You come across as a smart-arse with an "instant" explanation (=excuse) for the poor conditions in many third world hotels. India may have a lot of poverty, but the Imperial Hotel in Delhi is a five star hotel, the sort of place where Gordon Brown would stay if visiting India. To wake up with rats in your room and for the staff to treat the incident with indifference is appalling - not by Indian standards or by Western standards, but by the standards of hotels calling themselves five star - and charging acordingly.

[Pat]

Just like in a movie, only it was real . Usiually in northern Califoirnia you can find motels everywhere but on this journey there was only one for miles. NO town name, it was just a motel and gas station by a highway, bujt I wass tired. Nice big roioms, but they hadn't been used, or cleaned, in years. Taking the sheets off the bed I laid out some of my clothes for the kids to sleep while I sat on the only chair. I would have kept the kids in the car and slept there but my then partner said, "We've paid $15 and we'll stay!". Then sounds of shuffling outside ! Ominous ! but it turned out to be the owners flock of sheep for some unknown reason fixated on the window. Weirdsville. But I had my revenge. In the night, one of my kids had a massive vomit, straight onto the pile of mouldy sheets. No bath water ! No shower ! At dawn, I left....maybe the vomit is still there....

[Mathew]

The Garden Palace Hotel, in Garden City, Cairo. A friend of a staff member stole all my clothing piece by piece as I sent it to the laundry. I ended up literally wrapped in a sheet out on the landing with nothing to wear, and they wouldn't believe me. Then they finally called this Egyptian who had lived in the USA and after he heard the tale he somehow got most of the clothes back. It wasn't really the worst hotel in the world (no bedbugs, no theft, no drugs, no ubiquitous pimps, no violence, and only obtuseness rather than rudeness), but certainly one of the more bizarre. A cheapie though, with a nice sunny balcony to have the house breakfast on in winter.

The desk clerk was obviously afraid of the evil eye from the guests, cowering and making protective signs. Not least me - because he was afraid of revenge for what happened I suppose....Never encountered THAT before. He didn't seem to have much confidence in their service competence.

I can't believe it is still in business. If anyone knows let me know.

Another doozie was the hotel in Benares, India that killed a Japanese tourist to rob him, then dumped the body in the Ganges. And another lodge in the same city where the back wall of the lockable almirah (closet) opened onto the air vent and they'd climb up a ladder to the almirah backs, open them, and steal what you left in it while your were out then deny everything. Your lock was still in place, untouched. Some fellow finally saw a sliver of light at the back of the almirah and figured it out. It must have been planned in advance since it involved so much construction. I think the police closed both places. Benares wasn't normally this bad; it was full of small hotels and these were aberrations.

Ah, the old days of the happy hippie trail....

[Gill]

A few years ago, my husband (wanting to give our daughter a favourable impression of Exeter) threw financial caution to the wind and booked in to the the famous Royal Clarence Hotel in Exeter Cathedral Close.

Never again! Although seriously pricey, the dinner appeared to be a frozen, microwaved affair, the rooms were shabby and far from clean, and the full English breakfast was cold and featured tinned mushroons. To cap it all, they both contracted food poisoning, and came home seriously unwell.

You get what you pay for??

[Ido]

can't remember the name but it xas a camping place in Italy that was in fact great - hot water, swimming pool, good vibes. I was with my wife and we were on a bicycle trip. we went to sleep early, right after the mosquitos started attacking. That wasn't the problem, here it comes: around 3am we wake up in our tent, coughing, unable to breath. there was a awful smell of some kind of chimical product and since we were in a tent it stayed in. I went out terrified to find a man all dresed up in prtection cloths - suit, gas mask and all. he was firing jets of some kind of liquid tawrds the trees in order to kill the mosquitos... I wend furious while he tried to explain that it's not dangerous (why the mask then???) we had to wander with our sleeping bags around outside of the camping ground and to come back 2 hours later after the danger was gone.

[yun]

Westin Paris, it names itself with 5 stars hotel, we have mouse in our suite with drops all over, even mouses running in the corridor and excutive loudge. Very unpleasant and disgusting!

[Nicky]

My parents and I stayed at a hotel named The Kings Hotel in Bombay India about 16 years ago. We booked through a travel agent so we didn't know what we were getting into. After checking in, a gentleman brought us to our room. During the walk through the stained walled halls, the man preceded to spit on the carpet numerous times. After begin totally grossed out, we arrived at our room. The walls were water stained and molded, the sheets looked as if they had never been washed, and there were bugs hiding everywhere. We ended up placing clean clothing on the bed so that we could rest for a little while, as we had been traveling nonstop for about 48 hours. We finally got up and found the Holiday Inn close by. If the place is still standing, please stay clear of it!

[Tracey]

Some of these comments were seriously funny! I really enjoyed Dee, Bill and Natalie's descriptions of the hotels/motels.
Thanks -
I got a great laugh!

[Hannah Josiah]

The Royal Hotel Scarborough - my father-in-law had booked a room for us to go away for my husband's birthday. Our room turned out to be in the old part of the building serviced by a lift that was a Victorian antique (it leapt a foot in the air when it stopped - I only went in it the once). The room decor was tatty (the wallpaper was straight out of the 60s and peeling off the wall - there was some damp going on in places), the furniture looked as if it had been picked up from a flea market (in fact the wardrobe was a white wooden frame with some tatty, cast off material hanging over the front) and the carpet was dirty and had suspicious marks on it. There were even sweet wrappers under the bed (which we discovered when we moved the two single beds together - even though we'd booked a double)!

The bathroom was miniscule - far too small for the bath that was housed, which meant that the toilet was squeezed in the corner next to a boiling hot wall-hung radiator/towel rail. As a result my husband burnt his bum when he turned to pull his trousers up - he still bears the burn mark to this day.

Breakfast the next morning was equally a challenge - I was inconsiderate enough to ask for "herbal or fruit tea" to the "tea or coffee question". My request was met by a look of "you what?" by the pre-pubescent waiter who grunted and shuffled off to find someone who might know what the crazy woman was after. Another two waiters and 15 minutes meant that I eventually DID get my tea but by which time I was more than ready to get out of there.

Not quite the experience and service you'd expect from such a large hotel.

[MeG]

This won't make the cut as *worst* but a bit different. Trying to make too many miles, finally stopped in a town in Arkansas with a nice-looking Holiday Inn, which in those days (15 years ago) could be depended upon as acceptable. Alas, this motel's restaurant/bar turned into a nightclub, at, well, night...seemingly the only "nightclub" in the area. The thumping music & screeching tires we were tired enough to accept. But, we immediately pulled back the covers of one of the two tidy beds. To find hairs. Many hairs. Short ones. Not near the pillow. Not much of a wet spot, though; most of the moisture having been deposited in the crumpled tissues also scattered about the center of the bottom sheet.
This would have just been an amusing tale (management very apologetically gave us a better room & perks), rather like the trip when my sister found a pair of Jockeys under the bed of a similar hotel. But we were traveling with my friend's 8-year-old daughter. Very difficult to explain.
Then there was the 4-star Boston hotel where my bed's headboard (for one night only!) was bolted to the common wall it shared with the elevator.
Vermin tales as well, but these have been done...fun blog.

[Alun]

My friend and I stayed in a huge towerblock hostel in Cancun, Mexico in which we seemed to be the only guests (our suspicions should have been raised by this point). The rooms were filthy, the communal bathrooms had some kind of fungus growing in them and only one or two of the shower stalls still had doors on them. We went out in the night to have some dinner, then on our return we walked through the front door of the hostel and were halfway across the reception area when we heard a huge crash behind us. We turned around to discover then front door had fallen off its hinges and was lying on the floor! Needless to say we checked out the next day.

[Robert]

The City Youth Hostel in Amsterdam. It looked ok in the daytime but at night it turned out to be in the heart of the red light district. Loud music was playing somewhere in the hotel all night. And as a hotel the beds where assigned, on of the people sharing my room returned to find someone sleeping in his bed, when he tried to ask the individual about why he was in his bed, the individual pulled a knife. Hotel clerk grudging gave him a place to stay in the hobby and the indivual with a knife had a good nights sleep in this fellows bed.

[Rob Cordery Cotter]

My wife and I stayed in an up-scale apartment in Rome for a few nights several years ago, the place was attractively decorated the land-lady seemed quite nice. The tip-off should have been the large rat we saw drunkenly weaving down the side-walk (near-death from bubonic plague no doubt), after a nice stroll and a meal we went to sleep. That night the walls and ceiling were alive with the rumblings and scratchings of droves of Roman rodents, we hunkered petrified under the covers waiting for dawn. At first light we packed and fled, waiting fro Sue to pull the car around another car pulled up, the window came down and a lovely Italian girl sat scantily clad in the driver's seat, I leaned closer. "Leaving?" he asked in Italian, a shemale, returning home from a night's work wanted our parking space, we hastily obliged.

Year's later I watched the movie Ratatoulie with my kids, talk about a flashback...

[Tim B]

Not so much a 'bad hotel' but the cleaning needed some attention: Many years ago on a cheap week in Paris before getting married, I was sharing a room an old friend. We got back from the evening's beer session and, before turning in, were leaning out of the window hazily watching the world go by. In a room in the appartments opposite we saw a nude woman walk across the room and sit on a sofa. Then another. And yes, they started to amuse themselves and, of course, us. We turned our light off and watched whilst hanging onto - and hiding behind - the curtains. Why we thought anyone could see us in a darkened room across a street can only be a beer thing. Anyway, things progressed until, with a mighty 'crack' the curtain pole snapped and dumped an incredible amount of filthy dirty, dust-laden material on to us. I had asthma in those days...it kind of served me right, I guess. By the time we surfaced the lights, the action, everything was off on the other side of the road - and it tooks hour to repair the damage as our funds certainly didn't run to that kind of expense.
And there was the hotel on Naxos with the red polka dot walls. Yeah, splashed mosquitos...

[Jacquie Turk]

The Edison Hotel - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

My best friend, his fiance, and I went to a concert in the city about a year ago now. The weather was pretty disagreeable, but, we were hellbent on going. Considering the poor weather and the thought that we would probably be drinking that night, we decided to look a cheap hotel online. The best deal we found was for $50/night at the Edison Hotel. The price seemed like a complete steal considering that the address was right outside Pittsburgh's cultural district.

When the show was over, we drove to the address only to find that the hotel was attached to a strip club and also rents by the hour. The desk attendant was the only person with a key to the elevator, so you had to call down to the desk when you wanted off your blasted floor. The locks on the hotel room doors were so cheap you could easily break in with a credit card, so, we pushed all the furniture we could wrangle against it. Upon investigation of the room, we found a dark brownish-red drip that could be nothing else but dried blood, a small, empty bag with a trace amount of white powder, and a straw that was cut in half (figure that one out for yourself, please). My friends slept on the bed (gross!) and I curled up on the armchair/ottoman combo. Absolutely one of the worst nights of sleep in my life. Every dream I had that night was about leaving the hotel. Needless to say, we checked out as soon as we could in the morning and had quite a few laughs the next day.

[David Wilkie]

I recall as a teenager going on a fly-drive around Florida with my parents. One of the hotels we booked was The Port of the Islands, Everglades, which had the tagline “Nowhere can you feel so close, yet still feel a world away”. This ambiguity was true as it was so remote we almost drove past it. No doubt others had suffered the same fate as it was like a ghost town on arrival.

Upon entering the foyer, and surprised to see a human on reception, I noticed two stairways on both sides and countless doors on a mezzanine level. I later learned (and I don’t know whether this was true or not), but the place used to double as a brothel. The layout certainly testified to this.

Upon being given our keys, we headed off for our room, only to discover that it was already inhabited by a naked gentleman who was as shocked as we were when we met in the bathroom.

Upon changing rooms, we got dressed for dinner and wondered at the point in an otherwise empty hotel. After being served a drink by a muted barman who I noticed also had one arm, we were pointed towards our table for the evening. Suddenly, a number of Japanese businessmen turned up and the restaurant filled up.

Later, after an above-average meal, we headed back to our room, only to be met by a number of alligators on the greenery outside our room.

We quickly rushed past them and propped a chair against the door. This wasn’t for the alligators as such, more the fact that I’d convinced myself that I would be murdered during the night.

[Mike in Virginia]

In the 1970's I arrived in Guinea Bissau late at night. It was incredibly hot and humid and the street lights were not working. I was steered to a hotel, more like a one story storage building. I had to wake the clerk and I got a room with one light bulb and a cot. During the night I needed to heed a call of nature and go outside to the loo. I stepped onto the floor and stepped onto something slimey that moved. After my adrenaline surge had subsided, still on the bed, I reached over in the dark and found the hanging light bulb. The floor was coverd with large green toads that had come into the room through a hole in the wall. I spent all night with the toads, with the light on and when I awoke in the morning, they were gone.

[Bergman Coffey]

A cautionary tale. Never assume, if lifting a kettle in an hotel bedroom and it feels heavy, that it contains water.

A colleague made just this mistake in a UK hotel once and made some tea. It tasted strange. It was only when he looked inside the kettle he realised someone had peed into it!

Since I heard this I always empty the kettle out and make sure I fill it from a tap I can see.

[Alan C]

I was staying in the finest hotel in Rundu, North Namibia on the border with Angola. In the restaurant I ordered their steak with monkey-gland sauce - which actually tastes better than it sounds and contains no monkey. I thoroughly enjoyed the meal until coming to the last mouthful. I noticed that one of the chunks in the sauce had six legs. Closer inspection by me and then the waiter confirmed the worst. I received a free beer to wash it down.

[Rebecca]

I once stayed in a hotel in Gyantse in Tibet that was particurlarly basic (it only cost 80p per night each, so we weren't expecting much). It was New Year, so the temperature went down to around minus 25 at night. The rooms were off an open air gallery on the first floor, and the "toilet" was the last room with a hole in the middle of the floor, the idea being that everything flew down to a pile below. Most people appeared not to worry too much about aiming for the hole, and the men in particular just stood in the doorway and whizzed vaguely anywhere. One night I couldn't hold out until morning and went off for a pee. I pushed the door and stepped in, not realising that the pee river had turned into a downward sloping ice rink with the low nighttime temperatures. I went flying, straight to the hole in the middle......

[Chris]

The Regent Palace Hotel, Piccadilly Circus, London. I was a security officer at this 1000 bedroomed hotel when it was part of the Trust House Forte empire. First duty night confronted by an axe wielding 6'6" drunk outside room 1208, insisting the axe was his room key. So no reason to argue. 2nd week: Talking to a Health and Safety Inspector in the famous Carvery as two rats played tug of war with a bread stick on the buffet display. 3rd Month: Farmers Week, with hundreds of lovely Welsh farm lads having vomiting competitions in the bar. The best bit about the bar was the industrial rubber matting laid on the floor to allow easier disinfection of the place each morning. 6th month: Fighting pimps wielding iron bars in defence of their hookers' virtues (still got the scars!) 9th Month: trying to call the Police to quell a mass brawl in the bar only to be told that it was the Police who were fighting. All in all a wonderful place - an ink and water colour picture of the old place hangs in my study - courtesy of Denis.

[Paul Mc Donald]

The Great Northern Hotel (now confusingly called the Best western Great Northern Hotel) was a truly remarkable place. Located right by Kings Cross train station once had the delightful sound of trains being shunted all night long, staff that were near suicidal and decor that mixed and matched everything that could be considered vile and tasteless. Best of all, it was bloody expensive in comparison to much better B&B's in the area. I still shudder when thinking about it....

[Steve]

The Queens Hotel, City Square, Leeds. As a young lad in the 60's this was (and still is - outside anyway) a fantastic looking building which one could only dream of staying in at the time (being a poor Leeds lad).

I eventually got the chance about 4 or 5 years ago and was bitterly disappointed. The decor was still in the 60's. It may have been done up since but now my childhood dreams have been crushed....

[BW Smith]

Come now, let's play a game I can play. The worst hotel in the world is that one I didn't stay in. -bws

[Harry Barracuda]

Busan, South Korea, the World Cup in 2002. I'd booked an "official" hotel through the FIFA website, and not having been to Korea before, was somewhat bemused to find a circular bed. Even more mystified to see that every TV channel was soft porn. It was only when the groaning started from the fat Japanese businessman the other side of the tracing-paper thin wall in the next room that I deduced FIFA had booked me into what is cordially referred to as a "Love Hotel".

I'm not sure how many viagra this chap had popped, but when I checked out the next morning I could barely keep my eyes open, having been kept awake virtually all night by his horizontal gymnastics with the young concubine in his employ.

[James]

Re: the Paris Hilton:

Er.... I was being cheeky. I meant the person.

[delphine Verhaeghe]

one of the cheaper hotels in Amman, Jordany. After a lovely trip in the country we ended in Amman for the last night before our flight back.
because our funds were running low, we chose on of the hotels near the great mosque.
The hotel was everything you can expect for such a cheap hotel(truly horrid bathroom, bugs,.....) but the worse was the speakers of the mosque hangin from the wobbly balcony, calling for prayer day AND night....

[Steven King]

Blackpool again I'm afraid: big hotel - the one with turrets towards Fleetwood. There was no bathplug, no hot water and no toilet seat. But there were a few extras - two used condoms inside the bed. Not bad for £100 a night.

Someone, please, close the N******* down.

[IJB]

My mate were backpacking around India and had got in very late to Dehli the night before Independence Day - so there there was virtually nowhere to stay. Fortunately, a 'kindly' taxi driver took us to his 'friends' hotel - 'very cheap, very clean' - was actually neither.

The 'sheet' on each bed was filthy and you could actually see bugs jumping on the matresses and coackroaches running around the floor. The toilet was black from never having been cleaned... ever and the place smelled of sulphur from a factory across the road. My mate got in his cotton bed liner and justpulled the draw strings over his head. I didnt have one, so I sprayed my whole body and the bed with DEET (insect repelent), tied a t-shirt over my head and just passed out.

We left very early.

[Andrew]

A colleague and I checked into a small hotel in Cheddar at about 6:00 PM on a Tuesday. The manager/receptionist took some time to come when we rang the bell and look slightly disconcerted when he saw there were guests.

He explained there would be a small delay while our rooms were prepared so we had a walk round the town.

Rooms were fine, sauntered down to the fairly busy public bar where the same manager/receptionist/barman was serving.

Could we have dinner, smallish pause, yes please go through to the restaurant which was empty.

The manager/receptionist/barman/waiter appeared looking slightly flustered and took our order.

A long time passed and our meal started to arrive, served by the manager/receptionist/barman/waiter who was beginning to look quite red in the face.

We ate the meal which was OK but would have been better if all the component parts had arrived at the same time.

Slept well, in the morning on checking out the female receptionist and the only other member of staff we had seen let on that the manager had allowed all the other staff to have the night off because he had lost our booking and thought the hotel was empty.

We didn't see the manager/receptionist/maid/barman/waiter/chef again but assumed that he was having a well earned rest.

[Steve Carter]

Beware of a certain B&B in Harrogate....

.....Sybil Fawlty lives!

[Ariel]

We were staying in Portland for less than 24 hours and drove outside city limits for a better deal on sleeping arrangements. After checking into our 37 dollar "dream suite" we had to walk around an already flooded carpet around the bathroom to get to the bedroom which had a made bed and at least 2 different peoples hairs tucked into the sheets,(one was hot pink). After sweeping off the bed we laid to sleep and turned on the lights only to be shocked when we realized the room from floor to ceiling was covered in Glow-in-the-Dark, gang graffiti, nice

[Tyler Bell]

During our first two research trips (of many) to the Florida Everglades, we stayed at the Day's Inn Turnpike in West Palm Beach. One of the people in our group had ordered a pizza and left the extra pizza in a box near the door. The next morning, it was a swarming mass of fire ants making it difficult to exit without being bitten.

The second, and final, time we stayed there (didn't learn our lesson the first time), there had been a murder in one of the rooms above us. While we were there, there was a domestic altercation where a man was beating the snot out of his girlfriend/wife and we had to break them up before she ended up being fatality number two and before the police arrived.

[David Brook]

"Douglas Mansions" in W. London - now long-gone, thankfully. What an initiation to international travel on a budget! Shilling-meters. Dingy hallways. Bed-bug bites that took all the way to Greece to abate!
Across from the old British Airways office - grim grim grim. Pollution. Jet lag. And bed bugs.
Loverly!

[torun chakrabarty]

The worst hotel in the world was and is Fawlty Towers, Torquay

[Mel Thompson]

The Ali Baba of Costa-Mesa/Newport Beach: The room was $69 US, plus tax. When I got in the room, the television was off the television stand, and it was a heavy television, about to crash to the floor. I had to lift it up onto the dresser top so it would be safe.

The floor had bizarre, massive brown splotches that were then caked over with dirt. These alarming color changes looked like someone had spilled bleach and human waste about, tried to clean it with other chemicals, left it wet and allowed dusty encrustation to occur.

The room had no alarm clock and no coffee.

The comforter on the bed had cigarette holes burnt into it, and the entire room smelled of years of stale smoke.

One wall had a door on it, locked, leading to the adjoining hotel room. Thankfully it was locked, however, there was a significant gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. And there was a very loud couple next door blasting their television. They also had all the lights on.

The lights and the sound came through that gap, making me unable to get full darkness for sleeping. Also, since I got the direct effect of their blaring television, there would clearly be no sleeping. Finally I had to stuff towels under the door to block out some of the light and sound.

I'm not exactly sure how the place was constructed, but unfortunately a very noisy and heavy couple checked in above me, and it seemed like charging bulls were walking on the ceiling above me.

I am not at all exaggerating when I say I had to take some serious Valium and Sleeping Pills just to get through that night. The next day, after getting a few scant hours of rest, I woke up feeling very out of sorts and anxious.

Sadly, now that Hotels are so in demand, they have us consumers on the ropes. Plainly, if you want a place that isn't outrightly scary, in the US, you must pay about $130, after tax and all that. (If you want cheaper, you must do one of those no-cancel things, (and I just got burned for a few hundred dollars on one of those, so I can't do the total no-cancel online cheapie thing anymore).

If you want a nice room in London. Sorry, I didn't mean "nice," but rather I meant to say, "not scary." If you want a room in London that is merely not straightforwardly frightening, be prepared to lay out $200 US, at a minimum. (And those were last year's numbers. By now, with the US dollar devaluation and our floundering economy, I would bet a room that isn't overtly sickening in London would now be about $300.

As you can see, barring some economic miracles or other people helping to pay for me, I don't appear to have many travel days left on my current budget.

[Patrick HK]

The worst hotel I have ever stayed at was in Kathmundu, just off Durbar Square in the old city. It cost the equivalent of US$0.10 per night (yes, 10 cents, you read that correctly) which should have been a warning sign.

My spartan room had puke green walls where various drugged-out denizens had scratched their ravings. The bed was a plywood board with a sheet over it. But the worst thing was the rats.

Around the corner from my room was a "Saw"-style cesspit that was supposed to be the toilet. It actually had a western toilet (minus the seat) that stood in the center of the room. When I opened the door, there was a rat the size of a large cat sitting on the toilet. It looked up at me with an expression like "geez, can't you see I'm using the facilities??" I really had to go, so I closed the door and banged it several times. When I opened it, I could just see the tail of the rat peeking out from a slimy hole in the wall. I figured this was my chance, and quickly used the facilities with one eye on the rat tail and the other looking out below to make sure I didn't get bitten on the butt.

At night, the rats congregated in the ceiling above my room -- you could hear them scuffling around up there and I'm sure there must have been hundreds of them. My nightmare was that the ceiling would give way and they would all fall on me in the dark.

Did I mention cold water only and no showers? But who would have taken a shower there anyway? It was really cheap, though!

[Jonathan Newton]

The shoddiest hotels I have ever stayed in are all in London. In fact, unless you're on a five-star budget, you'd be hard pressed to find a hotel in London that isn't shoddy.

Even hotels that look decent at a first glance usually have rooms with peeling paint, stinking carpets in which new life forms happily evolve and procreate, and stenches that make you wonder WHAT died in there.

The Third World standards of London hotels should make the capital seriously ashamed of itself.

[P. Kane]

This review isn't mine, but I came across it a few years ago while looking for a place to stay in San Francisco and it always gives me a laugh.

"Its Not Fun to Stay at the Y.M.C.A.:

"For those of you who think staying at the YMCA men's hospitality rooms in Chinatown in San Francisco on Sacramento Street, please be advised to think again. This place is the worst dump that I've ever walked into, it's not like the YMCA buildings in New York city that are safe, spacious and decent for a budget traveler. Don't be fooled by the YMCA gym that is on the bottom floor, once they give you a key, you have to go around to the side which is highly dangerous and dark at night.

I walked in and there was garbage all over, on the floor, in corners, the whole place stunk like rotten food and urine. What I then saw truly disgusted me, the room they expected me to sleep in. The rooms are grotesque, no human should have to be
subjected to something like that. These are flop house rooms, pure and simple, nothing has been invested in them, NOTHING! The bed is dirty and from the 1940's,
it is one of those spring coil types with a smelly mattress that is probably original and on top of that it had some sort of flea or bed bug which gave me bite marks on my legs and I woke up with a strange rash on my face. There was no lock on the door either so I had to push the bed against the door in fear of my life.

The carpet, what was left of it, is all torn and has stains on it. For those of you seeking to watch a few nights of TV, there is none, I had to cozy up with a book by Dostoyevsky to pass the night hours away, take it from me, reading 'Crime and Punishment' is not something you want to read in a place like this. The furniture (an ugly dresser and one small nightstand with knife marks) is dirty and smelt bad. This place is a DUMP! Be warned, don't go using the restroom or shower either, I went in there and some guy was asleep in the toilet and some other guy was shooting up his arm in the shower. There are cockroaches and it seems that no one cleans the place. I quickly went down to the Chinatown Holiday Inn to do my business and brush
my teeth. Traveler's don't come here it seems, it's more of a junkie hangout, throw in a few former cons and just plain scum bags and that is what they have. I got ripped off for $50 for one night for this awful experience, I had to get out and demanded my full week's payment back from the irate Chinese service desk man or I would sue them, he quickly complied after I told him I would turn him over to the Health
authorities for numerous violations, including having rats running around like a pet shop. After that, I went to the Holiday Inn on Van Ness, let me tell you,its very worth the expense..." Oslo - February 2001"

[Ben]

Two very bad ones. Both in Thailand. One involved an amazing insight into the insects and small mammals of south east asia. They all joined me for a night in my 'beach bungalow' including a bat. The door had no lock and the walls had holes as big as my head with "Welcome creatures of the night in UV light adorned on them". Might as well have done. The mosquito net was also non-existent. If I hadn't intentionally gotten hammered so as to sleep I would have lost my mind and run. Anywhere. A trully terrifying experience. Especially considering I was alone and seriously isolated as the bungalows were pretty spread out.

Second hotel was used by the local prostitutes as somewhere to do business. Due to the cardboard walls and gaps where the wall joined the ceiling - I assume for ventilation - I had an interesting chorus throughout the night. Fifty year old plus western men, drunk, slobbering sweaty and awkward. That was a vile night.

Not sure which night was worse. Both involved beasts, indigenous or otherwise

[Rich]

Frighteningly expensive hotel next to Marylebone station, London. I had the smallest room in the entire world, furniture consisting of a single bed and a chair. The 'room' was about a foot longer than the bed & chair, and a foot wider than the bed... thankfully I do not suffer with claustrophobia, or I'd have been in trouble. The ensuite was a dirty lav and stained bath with shower taps that barely worked. Thank god I was only there one night.

[V]

Just after Christmas I stayed in the Holt hotel, nr Bicester, for business. Its a pretty basic hotel but seemed ok.

24 hours later my neck & arms were burning up - I had 100+ bites from bedbugs. They were so severe on my neck I had bruises!

When my travel agent phoned the hotel to complain, and made the point that the fact that the bites were clearly visible was embarrassing for me, especially in regards to work, the Manager apparently replied 'My wife's pretty & even though she gets bites, she doesn't get embarrassed'...!

[Joseph Redfrd]

The Goodbye Lenin Youth Hostel in Zakopane, Poland makes these hotels look decent in comparison. It cost around 60 zlotys (around twice as much as any other hostel in the town). I got diarrhoea from the breakfast, and the beds were dirty, and during the second night, some guy came into my room shouting at the top of his voice. I told him to shut up, and without any warning three guys came into the room, and punched me to the ground and started kicking me. It turned out that one of the guys was the manager, and the other two were members of staff. They told me to pack up and leave, everybody in the dorm room had left when I was packing up, and when it was just me, the manager and one of the members of staff in the room, the manager pointed a gun at me, and told me to leave Zakopane by tomorrow and not tell anyone about this or he would come after me. I obeyed the first part of his request. I later found out that the hostel, (and the city of Zakopane) is a notorious watering hole for the polish mafia, so I guess I was lucky.

[Tom Halpin]

The Carlton in Cannes. We had booked two rooms and the first we were shown stank of sewage.
So did the second and third.
Eventually they admitted there was a problem with the pipes.
The upside of the Carlton was we ended up in the very grand and non smelly Suite Clint Eastwood.
A close second was the Plaza in New York. No area for residents. It's a bit of a tourist attraction and we were told to queue with the non residents if we wanted to eat. It was like being in a railway station.
It's all about expectations. Our expectation of a grotty little no star hotel in the south of France riddled with bedbugs which we decamped from in the middle of the night was rather different to the above grand palaces.

[stanley hersh]

After reading George's comment above that the Prince William Hotel in London was "the worst hotel in the world", I decided to check out its website for fun, and sure enough there were LOTS of reviews that said exactly the same thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hilarious!!! Only you have been warned!!!