Hotel Horrors

Most popular / Oct. 18, 2012 / by Caroline / 9 Comments

Caroline Hurry

CAROLINE HURRY asks travel journalists and lodge owners what they hate most about hotels

What are your personal peeves when it comes to hotels? Mine include crappy hangers in the cupboards, insufficient shelf space, staff who don’t speak a word of English, GHASTLY breakfasts with no plain yoghurt – only flavoured which I loathe – and thick wedges of bread or cake. Not to mention getting fleeced for a spluttering sporadic wi-fi Internet service (my worst!) but it helps to complain. After tweeting these and other grievances about the Sheraton Four Points Hotel in Los Angeles, Chile, to #Starwood, the rooms manager Carlos Larranaga Meyer brought me a kettle and promised plain yoghurt would grace my breakfast table in the morning.

Kudos to Starwood for providing a platform for guest feedback on twitter and doing something about it. So they should. Anyway, here’s what some of you had to say about hotels and what you hate …

Charlene Smith

Charlene Smith: I hate dirty, smelly carpets in passageways. I just stayed in a $400 a night hotel in New York and the passageways smelled horrible!

I hate clattering airconditioners in most US and Canadian hotels and windows that are forever sealed. I object to paying for wireless internet. Expensive hotels in Boston & New York wanted to charge $10 a day, I went to Starbucks where it is free and the coffee is great.

Allison MacDonald: I hate those little coffee and tea stations. The kettle is always tiny and takes forever to boil and those horrible little sachets of tea and coffee that you have to rip open with your teeth are the most irritating things in the world. And then there’s the little milk sachets and boxed things that instantly turn me into a raving lunatic. And then there’s the bathrooms. I hate bathrooms that do not have a window you can open. Give me a bathroom with an extractor fan only, and I’m liable to punch a hole in your wall. I also hate those musty, filthy carpets. And the other thing I loathe is all those full length bathroom mirrors. Honestly, there are some things you’d rather not see yourself doing …

James Siddall

James Siddall: My pet peeve? Those stupid “trendy” open-plan bathroom-bedroom affairs. Used to be only in upscale boutique hotels but are now increasingly common as architects and builders have no doubt discovered that they save money.

Kerry Simpson: My pet peeve is mirrors placed too high for short people. I’m only just a shade over 1.5m and apparently all hotel guests are about 2m tall. And I also hate those milk sachets, especially when they spill all over your feet while you try to open the foil carefully. Recently, I was staying at a 4-star hotel for a conference and had spent seven hours on the road, so when I settled in for the evening I really wanted to sleep. Just as I was drifting off (about 9.30pm) I heard a persistent knock on the door. It was a concierge with my welcome pack including details of what I could order for room service and what time I could have breakfast. I had arrived at 3pm.

Toni Younghusband: I hate it when there are not enough hooks for jackets or for dressing gowns in the bathroom. What? Are you supposed to toss the gown on the floor outside the shower, or on the loo? Aarrgggh, it drives me nuts.

Lance Cherry

Lance Cherry: I love it when not a soul speaks English. It means I have got far enough away. After years in central China, months in Russia and Turkey, I have mastered nvc (non verbal communication). A wriggle of the knuckle, a lift of the eyebrow, a wiggle of hip … all the world’s in a gesture …

Chris Gilmour: I hate it when there’s no cooked breakfast. For me, breakfast is synonymous with a fry-up. I also hate squalid reception areas. I need room to breathe when checking in.

Susan Parker-Smith: I hate cheap coffee , long life fake milk sachets and buffets.

Lynne Smit: I hate the safes in the rooms that never work! And the horrible little milk sachets. When there is a fridge in the room, why can’t they give us real milk? Not to mention wall sockets that are impossible to reach when you are trying to find somewhere to plug in a laptop.

Helen Grange

Helen Grange: Overzealous cleaning staff knocking every 15mins from 8am. Room service that gets there cold and bath plugs you just can’t fathom. No two-pin plugs for the cellphone charger… aaaargh.

Lesley Cowling: I can never work out how to use the laundry system, but perhaps that’s a good thing seeing it’s 20 bucks a pant! (You mean a jean pant? – Ed)

Susan Ettmayr: Worst recently was at a B&B called Country Blue in Polokwane – chocolate flavoured yoghurt, baked beans tinged green, stale egg on underside of plate and caged bird pulling out its feathers on the verandah.

Gwynne Conlyn: I hate hard pillows, no space in the bathroom for toiletries, cold floors without carpeting, no decent reading light and oh, that squeaky bed!!

Svetlana Doneva: I hate cheap and nasty instant coffee in the room.

Christina Stucky: I hate it when there are not enough hangers; no sink plugs (to wash face, laundry); no place in shower stall to put shampoo and soap; poor sound proofing so you hear every step in the hallway and every cough next door; the room across from or next to the lift; long waits for lukewarm room service; breakfast “buffets” without fresh fruit in countries where you find fruit in abundance at markets. Hotel rooms with water cookers get a plus from me. And ditto hotels that don’t place single women travellers at the table near the loo in the restaurant (i.e. as far out of sight of other travellers as possible).

Kevin Leo Smith

Kevin Leo-Smith: Rip off wifi prices when we all know internet is cheap now

Mo Haarhoff: I agree with Caroline about the hangers and no plain yoghurt. I also hate it when there’s nowhere to put a damp towel to dry. I hate leaving them in a pile. It’s annoying when there are not enough teabags; I don’t drink coffee. I hate kettles that boil over onto the carpet and TVs I can’t work, especially when they’re my wake-up call. And being expected to watch my own egg being cooked for breakfast; I don’t want to see someone cleaning the hotplate first. Soggy toast from revolving toasters. Cold shower water and above-the-head showers … I prefer them from ahead of me, which doesn’t soak my hair. I also dislike heavy bed linen.

Tanya Farber: In a word, my pet peeve about hotels is MUZAK.

Simon Blackburn: (Owner of Three Trees) I hate being “nickled and dimed” – being charged R40 to have a shirt laundered or being ripped R80 for a bottle of water from your minibar, scalped to use the wi-fi etc.

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Rene Chartris

I agree that in this day and age, any hotel that charges for wi-fi internet access is a rip-off. That’s why I will choose wherever possible the Radisson Blu group. Wherever you go in the world their wi-fi access is always free … and their breakfasts are pretty good too.
Petra-Anne Pimm

I disagree with Lance Cherry. English is an international language and all international hotels should at least have front desk staff who can speak it. My personal pet hate is those horrid little plastic bottles full of chemical gunk called shampoo or body lotion … disgusting and bad for the environment. And the same hotel will leave you some poncy little note telling you to hang up your towels to save water and the ecology …like you as the guest are responsible …
Caroline

A small follow up on the yoghurt saga: when I went down to breakfast on the buffet table there was one — and only one — tiny little tub of plain yoghurt nestling among all the horrid fruit flavoured gunk. As I reached out for it, a big fat German chap beat me to it!! Nooooooooooo. I thought of fighting him for it but he was way bigger than me. Argggggggghhhhh! I tried to find the waiter but I think he’s avoiding me …
My sweet husband keeps saying: Stop making a fuss, but he’s Danish and just doesn’t get it. Plus there was only one roll of toilet paper in the bathroom (which is now finished), the lift hasn’t worked for over three days (only one works and there are 15 floors) and the wi-fi internet is more skittish than Springbok in spring. Carlos is divine and it’s not his fault but for a four-star international hotel, it’s not very impressive. If any hoteliers are reading this. PLease provide an abundance of plain yoghurt, toilet paper and if you’re gonna fleece guests for internet usage … can’t you at least ensure it works properly?
http://2summers.net/ Heather

I hate low water pressure in the shower, combined with a flimsy, postage-stamp-sized bath towel.
MLH

Have to add that I also hate hotel guests who use more water and electricity than they need simply because they don’t personally foot the bills. (They assume they are anyway.) Living in Durban, it becomes apparent during high seasons and long weekends that that’s exactly what most of them do, because people living in the suburbs inevitably suffer power outages of 6-12 hours when the mobs hit town. I don’t resent anyone having a holiday, but no one should be let out in public unless they’ve learnt some basic lessons about common decency.
Elaine Smith

I hate dishonest advertising, what you see in the advert is not what you get. We booked a Villa in Crete and everything was different to what we were promised. No electricity, which meant no hot water after 16 hours traveling, 50 metres from the beach turned out to be 500.
The cutlery was rusted, the shower shattered when turned on and the dressing table stool fell apart under my weight. The Greek tourism authority apologized but could do nothing about it, so short of being miserable for 10 days, it was better to grin and bear it..learnt great lessons though!!
Elaine Smith
Peter

I hate when the electricity automatic turns off after I leave my room. I come back and find the Ipad and cell phone batteries flat. When leaving my room I always turn the lights off. At home I let the light burn but that is for a different reason.
@mermaid_nix

Showers in the bathtub:
With water that cycles between arctic frigid and hades; with a showerhead that is at navel height; with a showercurtain that instantly wraps itself around your bottom. Ugh ugh
Karen Lotter

Another Peeve with a big P is why can’t they have decent TV – even four and five star hotels seem to buy this cheap Hotel Dstv package without CNN, Sky and Al Jazeera. I really don’t want to watch Portuguese soap operas or German badminton etc – just give guests some Really good international news channels.