Man, I'm not so sure that women are more likely to complain or vent in general than men are. On the other hand, if by a hotel from "Hell", we're talking about a place that's slovenly or dirty, then <I>my</I> "sexist" comment would be that perhaps women have a more exacting standard, <I>in general</I>, than men do in that regard.

My B&B from hell was in Wisconson, not Europe. I wasn't going to post it, but after Joan's challenge I decide to anyway. <BR> <BR>When we were checking in and told the owner we were from Washington, DC, he asked if I worked at the CIA because everyone in Washington works there. My wife has food alergies, so we asked if there would be anything she could eat in the morning. The said they would cook some eggs for her. In the morning, they banged on all of the doors at 7AM getting everyone up so they could change the sheets. At 9:00, they trooped everyone to the dining room for breakfast. They stood in the doorway with their arms crossed dictating the conversation topics. They had everyone give their name, where they were from, and what they did for a living. Breakfast consisted of pastries bought at the local grocery store. Each plate was passed around the table once and taken back to the kitchen, no seconds. When my wife asked for the eggs, they got indignant. When someone asked if the owners had openned up the B&B for a working retirement, it became obvious that was what they had thought they were doing, but didn't realize how much work it was. They were very bitter people. One unfortunate young couple were there on their honeymoon and had put up with this for a week. We haven't stayed in a B&B since. Unlike the hotels in other posts, the place was spotless. Our room was a little too country cluttered for my tastes, but is was all quality antiques.

We had a bad experience with a London flat which we got through British Airways. It definitely had seen its better days & was now owned by an absentee Middle-Eastern landlord. It was a depressing basement flat with a filthy rug (took them 3 days to get around to half cleaning it) & we were there during the middle of a heat wave. Every night the defective fire alarm would shrilly sound, making sleep very difficult (we had trouble sleeping anyway what with jet lag & the heat). They always promised to fix it but only succeeded in its going off later each night - like 3 a.m. (& sometimes more than once). We were so exhausted each day that we couldn't drag ourselves out of the room until noon. <BR> Our next London hotel was much nicer (after an interim visit to York) but we were evacuated at midnight in our pajamas after a heavy rainstorm did in the roof! (We wondered what all that water was running down our walls!)

I'm like Janice, my tale of woe is tame compared to everyone else, but I am also on a crusade. I stayed at the Minerve in Paris last year and it just about ruined my whole trip. The fat bald man at the desk was very unhelpful. We had a bunch of things wrong in the room--bad remote control for the TV, a burned out light bulb in the bathroom, no shower curtain (causing the bathroom to flood). <BR> <BR>Our requests were very simple. The TV remote in our room did not work, so we asked that it be fixed. The first day that we brought the remote to the front desk, they said they would try to take care of it. When we returned at the end of the day, we were told that we turned it in too late and needed to give the remote to the front desk in the morning. The next morning, and the next, we brought the remote back down and made the same request. We even put our request in writing, but it was not fixed. We would pick up the remote every day and ask if it was fixed, and the bald fat man would retort that he did not know. And of course, it wasn’t fixed. By Saturday, he was telling us that it could not be fixed until Monday. And if the fat bald man had told us from the start that he could not fix the remote, that would have been okay--all we needed to know was if he could fix it or not. He didn’t need to lie to us. Maybe he was too busy talking on his mobile phone all the time to help us. <BR> <BR>Finally, Mitre (who was the only nice person at the front desk) helped us by giving us a remote from another room. How simple! <BR> <BR>The other problem was the light in our bathroom. One had burned out the first night, so we were requesting that it be fixed every day....every day as we asked that our remote be fixed. And of course, our requests were ignored. We finally tried to use a bulb from one of the stairwells to fix it ourselves, but it didn’t work. Our bathroom light was never fixed, but we noticed that the one in the stairwell was replaced right away. Don’t you think it’s strange that a guest’s request is repeatedly ignored, but the stairwell gets attention? <BR> <BR>Anyway, I know it sounds so petty for me to complain -- especially now that I've seen WORSE stories -- but no paying guest should ever be subjected to bad service & arrogance, in any hotel in any part of the world.

I stayed at a three day conference in Glaway in one of the big hotels in the centre of Galway, the name of which escapes me.(not the Great Western; might have been the Station). Had a pefectly pleasant attic room. <BR> <BR>Late at night a party started in the room next to mine- 1 or 2 in the morning. Eventually I got up and asked them to tone it down. It was the staff, and I suspect they had thought they had the floor to themselves. they were, however drunk, and thought a polite, very tired guest a very funny thing. So it got a bit quieter then a lot louder then running feet. They had put the television on full volume and locked the door as they left. <BR> <BR>I could not get the front desk to answer and eventually had to get up and find the night porter, who denied that any such thing was possible. It took him over an hour to beother to come and open the room and switch the thing off. <BR> <BR>I actually didn't mind the start of it- I've worked in hotels myself and know how these things can happen- but the "you must be imagining it, madam" esponse of the night porter drove me to distraction!!

Travelled to London at Christmastime about 9 years ago, with a friend. We had booked a budget-priced hotel, despite the warnings of our travel agent who said it seemed a bit low-cost for London and she wasn't sure this was a great idea. Our only stipulation was that it be reasonably clean and have two beds in it. We arrived after travelling through the night, quite exhausted but pleased to be in such an exciting city. We got to the hotel, which seemed pleasant enough, but the front desk clerk informed us that they were closing for the Christmas holiday! Why nobody had thought to mention this to us or our travel agent at the time of booking several months before is anybody's guess. In any case the clerk told us they had arranged for us to stay at another hotel and would send us by taxi "at no cost to you!" Darn right, we thought, but eventually the taxi arrived and took us to the other hotel. It didn't look all that bad in the lobby, but there was a lot of activity at the front desk, and this seemed to be overwhelming the clerk who actually at one point put her hands over her ears and screamed. Not a good sign. She gave us our key and we piled ourselves and our suitcases into the tiny lift and went up to the room. It had one double bed. Not acceptable. So we piled our stuff back into the little lift and approached the clerk again; she was on the verge of screaming again but we explained the situation and she gave us another key. Back into the lift. Up to the new room. This one had two beds. I sat on one of them and it folded around my ears; my friend went into the bathroom and said "Hey, this is great. You can sit on the toilet, brush your teeth, and have a shower all at the same time." The room was utterly dismal. I rummaged around in my suitcase and found one of the guidebooks I had brought, and there was a listing for Durrant's Hotel, which was twice the price we were paying but still reasonable (for London). I called them, they had a room for us, and we went. It was lovely, and I've returned there several times since then; I should imagine the front desk clerk at the other hotel has probably been hospitalized by now!

I vaguely remember that the hotel in Rome was pretty bad, but not terrible. I was 25, and my friend and I had made the reservation at the Italian tourist office in our previous overnight stop, which had been our M.O. throught the trip. The owner/manager was an elderly (to us -- he was probably the age I am now!), somewhat sleazy character. <BR> <BR>Our trip had been plagued by "scioperi bianchi" and other labor actions and other mysterious reasons for EXTREME train delays. Passing a newstand, I'd noticed a headline re a possible full-blown "sciopero" affecting the trains, but hadn't bought the paper or stood around actually reading the article. I asked the man what news he'd heard about this. He told me there were absolutely no strikes, "white" or otherwise, and never had been! <BR> <BR>We should have had the sense not to believe anything he said from then on. Instead, we "bought" stamps from him, which he offered to put on our pile of postcards; we had a lot, since we hadn't had a chance to buy stamps for a few days. <BR> <BR>Sequel: No one ever received the postcards "mailed" from that hotel in Rome. That was 1972. Some of the intended recipients (our parents) have been dead for years, our friends have all moved, and I guess it's reasonable to give up hope....

I love this thread!

An opportunity to save others from a ruined hotel stay! I don't kow what it is about Florence, but I don't like it and I think its because both times I've been there its been 90* and humid and I've stayed in horrible hotels! <BR>The first I don't remember the name of but the room had no windows and was off the kitchen. I was 18 and with a youth group so I couldn't do much about it. It was 85* and raining at the time! <BR>BUT! The Hotel Veneto, which I encountered last year is a must NOT! <BR>Again it was about 90* and we had unexpected problems with the hotel we were meant to stay in. The owner of this hotel swore there was air conditioning, my one deal breaker. Well when we got up to the room, the "air conditioner" was a swamp cooler that sounded like an AC, looked like and AC but sure didn't blow like and AC. When we went to open the window for air the window was painted shut. The window looked into a narrow courtyard littered with old beds and frames that looked like they'd been thrown down from floors above. The floor was gritty, the sheets questionable. But my favorite part was taking a shower. It was one of those bathrooms that has the shower head in the wall and the whole bath is the shower? Not unusual in Italy. Well after a hot, crowded day in Florence I was enjoying a cool shower when I heard my companion screaming. Water was flowing from under the bathroom door! By the time I got out it was a small river streaming across the floor, out the door and down the stairs.

<BR>I believe the most creative people on the face of the earth are those who produce hotel brochures and room photos for hotel websites. <BR> <BR>Oh I know there are lots of brochures that give an honest picture of the property you are considering but there are also a lot that miraculously create enticing portraits of places that qualify as hotels from hell. <BR> <BR>Iknow something about lenses and cameras but I still get suckered in by a picture of a hotel room that looks super and turns out to rate 10 on my hotel depression scale---even with a fish eye lens how do they manage to get a gloomy 10 sq meter room to look spacious clean and bright? <BR> <BR>AH

Oh my God: <BR>I am sitting here laughingwith tears rolling down my face!! Have I ever been lucky! <BR>No horror stories to tell, YET! <BR>Please keep this thread going!

Not really from Hell but very strange. In Jan00 I was traveling the Peloponesse by car, I wanted to stay in Mycenae for a few days at the hotel (Belle Helene) that Heinrich Schliemann (archaeologist that discovered Mycenae in 1874, Troy, etc) stayed at but *only* if his room (#3) was available. His room is kept in period except for the electric light and possibly the sink, the room has an antique bed, furniture and no heat. I show-up ~2pm a young man is sitting in front of a heater watching TV, he says #3 is available so I happily take it. He gives me my room key plus a front door key in case it's locked he says. I leave for 15min to pick-up a local guidebook at the site for tomorrow's visit. I return and the hotel door is locked upon entering I walk over to the desk just to see if any other rooms are occupied, all the keys (~12) are there except mine. The hotel is *dead silent* as I read my new guidebook and have a couple of glasses of wine (I had a cold just waiting until the restaurants open ~7pm. I leave for dinner and return to a dark and still empty hotel and it's getting cold!!! ~10pm it's freezing and I have on all the clothes I possibly can on plus all the blankets on the bed. I can see my breathe and it's got to be below 0C/32F. I'm running hot water in the sink for the steam and the wine isn't keeping me warm either. The next morning ~9am I left my keys on the vacant front desk and went to a nice & *warm* 4* outside Nafplio. He just left the whole hotel to me all alone for 18hrs, complete with a fully stocked lobby bar. Regards, Walter <BR>

What a hilarious thread...and glad to hear others have had "interesting" hotels too. Our worst was the Crofton in London near the British Museum about 8 yrs ago. A great location BUT our room was in the basement w/ no windows, the door didn't lock, there were no blankets or top sheets on the twin(supposed to be double) beds...they had old sheers on them! Yes, sheer curtains for blankets. We couldn't open the door fully b/c the bed was in the way...and we had to move the 2nd bed to get into the bathroom. We didn't worry about a breakin at night b/c noone could have opened the door, our bed was right up against the door. We gave up asking for working lightbulbs. We switched the one 25Wattish in the room to the bathroom when we needed to get ready in the morning! The towels were so thin and stiff that they stood up on their own. Toilet paper and extra sheets were stored in the courtyard leaning up against the building. There were no creepy crawlers at least. About a month after we got home, "European Vacation" was rerunning on TV...I SWEAR the hotel Chevy stayed in London was the Crofton, altho he must have gotten one of their luxury suites!

House rentals also have their problems. See <BR> <BR>http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/andyfarrand/ <BR> <BR>Mr. Farrand rented a house in the Dordogne in the winter of 1999 and had a terrible time. Often vacation homes are not what they should be because the owners are only interested in earning money. When they don't use the house much, maintenance just doesn't get done. <BR> <BR>It certainly has happened to me when I have rented beach houses. I had one where the hot water heater did not work and the stove started a fire. Obviously we did not rent that place again. <BR> <BR>

Mine is just a hotel from heck, but I'm still glad we were only there one night! Hotel Sailer in Innsbruck, 1985: I trust it's much better now. It was decorated in what could best be described as 1960's and convent (not a convent in the sixties; a combination of the two) and had a bathroom door that was only attached at the top. But the worst thing was that it stank! It was a horrible combination of chemical, b.o., and who knows what. The location wasn't so great, either, and everything else was full as there was a convention of travel agents in town. We had a great time laughing over this armpit of a place, but, like I said, it was only for one night!

To the top, Jeeves!

Well, the last time I stayed at the Ritz in Paris I was so disappointed. My tea I ordered through room service was only luke warm when they brought it. What a shame!