Best and Worst Hotel Experiences

[Ex-Ascot]

Most of us have spent vast numbers of nights in hotels but I can't find a thread on this subject. This is prompted by Britannia Hotels having just been rated the lowest in the UK. https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... ich-survey

Some of the reviews are hilarious. Many years ago we stayed at the one in my home village Hale, Cheshire. It was terrible the manager got a one sided interview. One review says the carpets are worn and sticky. A fat naked man walking down the stairs. Prostitutes knocking on your door and a ham sandwich on the floor of the lift.

I think my worst ones have been in Russia. I remember one in Novosibirsk where you could limbo dance under the door. The curtains didn't fit the window. The bath towel was a dishcloth. Cold and damp. Filthy. One crew member had bed bugs. The tongue at supper had hair on it. The press were begging us for food leftover on the aircraft but we had already eaten it.

Difficult to decide the best. The Oriental in Bangkok takes some beating. Stayed in Presidential Suites in the M.E. which were quite incredible. I stayed for a month in George III Hotel, Penmaenpool Wales. We are not talking luxury but actually that is my sort of place. It doesn't have to have gold taps to be the best.https://www.walestouristsonline.co.uk/s ... Hotel.html

[Alisoncc]

Definitely the best. Working as a field eng with RCA, spending time with Pan Am In Berlin at Tempelhof. Booked in at Bristol Hotel Kempinski on the Kurfürstendamm. This was fifty years ago when the Kempinski was Berlin's equivalent to the London Savoy. Had a bed-sit out near Heathrow, and hotel room was larger than my permanent dwelling.

It was the kind of hotel where if you stood still in the reception area, a uniformed attendant would place a chair behind you, bring up a small table and ask if he could bring you a coffee or a drink from the bar. Pan Am were picking up the tab via RCA, so I didn't hold back. It's been the only time in my whole life that I've enjoyed the absolute tops in luxury. That along with the cake shops on the Kurfürstendamm, magic. Cakes for adults, instead of sugar-laden rubbish for kids that is the norm in Oz. Black forest cake with sour cream and morello cherries, and cake doused in some liqueur. If you rang room service in the hotel they would go next door and bring slices of cake on request.

[John Hill]

The Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, c1999, was a hotel to be remembered. Electricity some of the time, the bedside lamp was a candle. My bedhead had a bullet hole in it. Very basic menu and evening meals had to be ordered at breakfast to allow someone to go to the market. Their main dish was a choice of chicken kebab and lamb kebab although one could have special meals by request, the pelau were re markedly good. They made breakfast toast in the dining room on an upturned electric radiator. The staff proudly wore 30+ year old IH uniforms all carefully hand darned and ironed. No alcohol of course but the coffee and chai were very good and the staff were amazingly cheerful considering their situation.

Of course I could tell you about the meals at the Koryo hotel in Pyongyang but I cant be bothered at the ***** that might attract.

[Hydromet]

The two worst hotels I've stayed at were as far apart in every possible way, except that both would have had to reach up to touch rock bottom.
The first was the old pub at Lyndhurst, South Australia, back in the 1970s. We didn't usually stay there when in the area working, but occasionally had dinner there, as the lady cook really knew her stuff. I'm not sure what induced us to stay there, but we did. We should have known that not many people stayed there when the publican, Bubble, (about 165 cm tall & 130 kg) couldn't find a key for the only room that was available. This didn't matter, as the window wouldn't close, and it was easy enough to climb in from the footpath. The room & bedclothes were filthy, and the shower was more or less open air. The pub later burned down, causing thousands of dollars worth of improvements.
I'm not sure if the Hotel Pennsylvania in NYC would be improved by the same sort of accident, as the surly staff would probably survive. Despite being quite expensive, it was filthy, with fungus & cracked tiles in the shower, threadbare furniture and bedclothes in the tiny room and uninterested staff.

[ian16th]

Worst: the North Western Hotel Karachi, c1960

Best: Le Touessrok, Mauritius

[TheGreenGoblin]

The hotel is now gone, but it was the Boa Vista Hotel in pre-independence Lourenco Marques. The hotel was significant for bri-nylon sheets, rancid olive oil stained carpets, a villainous Portuguese manager who made Basil Fawlty look sane, skid marks on the toilets, broken air conditioning, bed bugs and scum marks in sinks and baths not to mention the restaurant where I was food-poisoned, resulting in hospitalisation and poor health for some months. Thankfully the hotel burned down, as a result of either an insurance job or sabotage just before the Portuguese left.

If anybody wants a warning about a current hotel in Maputo then I nominate the Hotel Cardoso. Incompetent staff, say no more...

Best most recent experience for a reasonably priced pet and family friendly place in the Lake District.... Linthwaite House.

[om15]

Worst was a hotel in Stamford, on rate 1s at a repair job at Wittering, it was disgusting, tepid beans for breakfast and no hot water. This was worse than hotels in India, Egypt and France all combined.
Best was the Henbury Lodge near Filton, perfect in every way, stayed there numerous times over several years, couldn't be faulted, rooms spotless, massive breakfasts, dining room with aproned waitress's straight from the 1930's.

In between every airport hotel everywhere, germ pits and rubbish foreign food.

[Ex-Ascot]

Do not talk to me about airport hotels. Must have stayed in over a hundred. We have been through so many hotels at JNB. Once thought the the Protea Transit Hotel would be a solution where you stay air-side instead of having to go out. It is a bunch of windowless air conditioned boxes. That is it. What hotel has no bar or restaurant, or indeed windows. You can't call that a hotel. The Inter Continental right by the entrance is excellent with a price to go with it. Stayed there once when I lost patience waiting for transport for another hotel. The Sunnyside Park hotel Parktown is one of our favourites, a National Monument and Heritage site. Two massive open fires in the lounge which used to be the ballroom. However the rooms inside are very noisy from ancient air conditioning and kitchen air vents. The only rooms that we will take are the few outside ones overlooking the pool. Great pub and pub grub. Another great place is one ALC recommended next to his pub and bewery: Misty Hills Country Hotel Krugersdorp. It is a bit far from JNB but fantastic stone built chalets as studios. Open fires in the studios. Waterfalls and streams running between them. Tropical gardens. For many years we stayed at The Grace Hotel Rosebank which we highly recommend. Incredible breakfast buffet. We have stayed in many more places for JNB which are not worth a mention. Just middle of the road.

[Alisoncc]

Ex-A, forty five years ago the Balalaika at Sandton was considered one of the better places to stay. Used to put UK visitors there.

[Sisemen]

My first hotel in country Western Australia was somewhat of a shock. Northam is a largish town only about 100km out from Perth so not exactly in the back of beyond. I stayed at the local pub/hotel. The room that I was given was small and dingy with the only electric light a bare globe handing on a cord from the ceiling. There were cockroaches that scurried away when I entered. The ‘facilities’ were at the end of the corridor with mouldy shower curtains and what looked like someone’s bush on the shower floor. The row of sinks all had rusted plug holes and rusted iron stanchions holding them, more or less, to the wall. Apparently this was considered most acceptable by the locals who had a good laugh at the new ‘pom’.

Almost 30 years later I would have thought that things might have improved, but last month we ended up in Koorda - about 250 km from Perth. The pub/hotel was marginally better, but not much, and still with communal ‘facilities’!

[Smeagol]

As is the case of many on this site, I have stayed in numerous hotels over the years both for work and pleasure, but deciding on which to place at either end of the scale is a bit more difficult. However, after some thought I will make the awards as follows:
Worst - A hotel in Bukittinggi, Sumatra, Indonesia in about 1980, the name of which I have fortunately forgotten! We stayed there as part of an organised trip from our home on an oil camp in Rumbai. The rooms were basic to say the least and when it rained, as it does most days, we had to move the bed to the centre of the room as all four walls had water running down them! This combined with the mosquitoes and other assorted wildlife made the place fairly unpleasant.
Best - Never stayed in anything truly palatial like some others, but on a work assignment to Sri Lanka in the 1990's stayed in the Trans Asia in Columbo (now the Cinnamon Lakeside) and had one of the suites for the whole time. Not overly plush but more than comfortable and as a long term guest the staff were extremely helpful and friendly, evn going so far as to go out and get our favourite beer when the bar ran out! Attending the manager's cocktail party every month was also fun ...and very alcoholic.

As an aside, whilst in Sri Lanka we (Mrs S came out for a month) visited other places Kandy, Galle etcand when in the latter went into the New Oriental Hotel inside the old walled part of Galle. It was not new or vey oriental but more a throwback to the days of Empire with the bar having walls lined with animal trophy heads, all polished wood floors(by a retainer who looked like he had been there since 1890 himself!), bedrooms with four-poster beds with mosquito nets, needed because there was no A/C just louvred windows. An amazing place. I believe it is now an ultra luxurious 'retreat' for the very wealthy and has probably been totally ruined.

[Capetonian]

Not by any means the worst but one of the few that I actually documented:


On a business trip to Illinois, I discovered that our ever helpful travel coordinator had booked me into a hotel which was a three hour drive from the town I was to visit the next
morning. In a hotel guide, I found the number of a motel in the town itself, and called them
for a booking. A room was available. I asked the price.
"Eighteen dollars, with breakfast".
Surely I'd misheard.
"Eighty dollars?", I queried.
"Eighteen dollars, and we can do you a discount if you're in for more than one night".
Obviously nobody ever chanced a second night. I was worried.
"Do you have any deluxe rooms?" I asked, imagining the eighteen dollar room to be a
cockroach ridden underground cellar where the only running water was from the ceiling.
"Sure do. We can do you the deluxe for twenty eight dollars."
I asked the difference between 'standard' and 'deluxe'.
"Deluxe gets you a carpet and a towel."
I took it, as up to then I'd never stayed in a bad hotel in America and optimistically
assumed that this would at least be clean. I slept in my clothes, deciding that I'd stay cleaner
that way than by risking intimate contact with the stained mattress whose exposed rusty
springs would probably have removed some of my vital organs. Two threadbare rags that
may have started life as bedsheets some time during the last century lay folded at the foot of
the mattress. The airless room smelt of ancient cigarettes and decay. The only comforting
thought was that the air was so stale that I was sure that no living being had been in there for
months, nor could have survived, lessening my chances of picking up any unwanted
livestock.
In the morning, after a spray of rust and dead cockroaches, a few drops of brown liquid
emerged from the shower head. I brushed my teeth with some flat Coke, mindful of what
Coke does to tooth enamel but feeling more comfortable with this than with the motel's water
supply, turned my back on the sordid room, paid my twenty eight dollars, and headed for
town, where for the only time in my life, I was pleased to see a McDonalds.

[ian16th]

I do honestly believe that the American chains have improved the basic level of hotels, world wide.

I am as guilty as anyone of referring to them as 'People Processing Palaces', but when one checks into a Holiday Inn or a Marriott et al, one knows what one will get. And what one gets tends to work.

[OFSO]

Cannot remember the hotel I stayed in at St Omer where waking in a pool of perspiration at 2 am myself and wife number two discovered the bed linen - undersheet, pillows and duvet - was all made of rubber, and through the paper-thin walls we heard the British threesome in the next room noisily enjoying the pleasures of copulation. Normally one would find this sort of thing marginally erotic, but everything was so wet and slippery there was no question of seizing anything, so the tempus fugited until we left at dawn.

[boing]

We checked in to our hotel in Dallas, Texas, to be told that all of the regular rooms were full because of a convention so we were going to be given the Presidential Suite. OK, we had heard this joke before but, to our amazement, we were given the suite that JFK occupied the night before his assassination.

The suite was entered from double doors opening to the corridor, the first room you entered was a large lounge equipped with luxurious sofas, easy chairs and writing desks that must have been 60 feet square. Opening off of the rear wall of this lounge there were two bedrooms with their own sitting areas and massive bathrooms, one for me and one for the co-pilot ! The entrance to the bedrooms was behind a long partition and on the rear of this partition was a wardrobe area with about 30 feet of clothes hangers. Obviously not designed for pilots living out of a suitcase.

A most enjoyable stay with one interesting incident. In the morning I got ready to go down for breakfast. The co-pilot was already up and reading in the sunshine in one of the easy chairs against a window, he did not feel like breakfast so I left him to his book. When I returned to the rooms he was still sitting in the lounge but he was rather agitated. Apparently, some time after I left his bedroom door, which he had left open, slammed shut with a very loud crash. There were no windows open anywhere so no drafts, no automatic closures on the doors, no obvious reason why the door should slam shut especially so violently. We wondered.

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[fin]

For years, the Royal Orchid in Bangkok held top spot in my experience, but then I stayed at the Mount Nelson in Capetown, familiar to many of you here. Oprah had been there the previous week, and I found myself sharing the hotel with the Premier of China and many of his top Generals. Sadly, it was early in the administration of the second Bush, and the Chinese had a US Spy plain in custody. In fact they insisted the hotel take down the American flag.

More recently, the top spot went to the Inkaterra Pueblo hotel, located in the Sacred Valley of Peru, with a close second to the Inkaterra Hacienda, which is by the train Station in Machu Picchu. Their website has videos which are worth a thousand pictures.

The worst overnight accommodations were not not technically a hotel, but a room on Bali just across the water from Java. It cost USD 2 for a single night, and was worth every penny.

Worst actual hotel was right off the Puerta de Sol in Madrid. It was a Best Western which had usually been OK in my experience, but this particular one was a horror for many reasons.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Not by any means the worst but one of the few that I actually documented:

On a business trip to Illinois, ... a few drops of brown liquid
emerged from the shower head. I brushed my teeth with some flat Coke, mindful of what

Your evocative story about that appalling USA hotel reminded me of the kind of place that William S Burroughs would have placed one of his New York junkies as per his famous Christmas story... he paid $2 for his room.



Talking of New York I wonder if anybody here has ever stayed at the Chelsea Hotel in New York? I guess not as many of the residents there were writers and the like and many of those were long term residents and pilots tend to be less whimsical than that.

Hotel Chelsea

[Rossian]

The worst was the "airport hotel" on Sal Cape verde in Oct 1967 enroute to Madagascar via the pretty route. Salt water showers but no salt water soap. Bottled water was more expensive than Mateus Rose so guess what the Shackleton crew drank? Wibbled off to room and pulled down bed cover to watch all the cockroaches diving under the pillow. Pulled up bed cover and lay down to the sound of crunchy cockroach corpses. Didn't sleep well!
Best, many years later, on arrival at the Fairmont in Singapore at 1AM tired enroute from NZ. I won't try to write Singlish , Vsorry we no have room for you. Madame explodes and slaps copy of booking on counter - find one!!
I may have solution, will you be OK with a penthouse suite for tonight and tomorrow we find you better room than you booked. Oh, alright, if you insist (don't smile
missus).
It was bigger than the ground floor plan of this house. A fully set up kitchen (for your executive chef to prepare food for your guests). A dining table for 12 people.
Next door thro a glass wall was the garden room c/w indoor barbeque, a water feature and a balcony 52 inch TV and Bose sound system. Next door a lounge with anther huge TV and comfy chairs. Next door again a business centre with internet to everywhere and several phones. At the other end was a 8 foot bed on a plinth.
His and hers bathrooms, two showers and a huge bath and, wait for it!, a sauna! Now of all the things you need in Singapore I think a sauna is the least necessary thing on the island. A big balcony with a fantastic view of the marina bay hotel under construction and night sky over Singapore city. Next morning they moved us down to the next floor for a room that was really what we needed and was equally comfortable with the same view over the city.
The breakfast buffet was incredible, with all the cuisines of the world and replaced every 30 minutes.
The staff were fantastic, I left my camera in the back of a taxi and they tracked down the taxi and went and fetched it to us the next day and refused a tip - part of our service sir.
I didn't bother asking what the room rate was for the suite.

The Ancient Mariner

[om15]

There were no windows open anywhere so no drafts, no automatic closures on the doors, no obvious reason why the door should slam shut especially so violently. We wondered.

The Petwood Hotel in Woodall Spa used to have a bit of a reputation for ghostly happening, I stayed there for a few days about ten years ago, didn't see a ghost but found it rather cold and damp, the museum bit is rather creepy to sit in on your own.
It is registered as an official site of abnormal happenings, with several sightings of Guy Gibson in his shirt sleeves recorded in the gardens.

[boing]

If I could meet Gibson I don't care what it takes.

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