World’s worst hotels rated and slated by travellers
If Fawlty Towers is your idea of the worst that hospitality can offer, think again. The internet website Tripadvisor has compiled a list of the world’s worst hotels, with reviews by its customers that make Basil Fawlty’s establishment look like the Ritz.
First up is the H Top Olympic Hotel in Calella, Spain. One disgruntled reviewer describes her recent stay there as “a nightmare from start to finish”.
“The rooms were dirty, the food horrible. There was a lot of fighting in the room next to us, there was a couple fighting and the next thing we heard was glass breaking. The guy had put his arm through the glass door there was blood everywhere.”
Another traveller stayed there last week at the same time as a group of student holidaymakers and is still in shock.
“Their teachers had to be fetched out of the bar three nights running by hotel security because their pupils were running round the hotel drunk!”
“The worst hotel I have ever stayed in... beware of the clowns,” advises a guest at the Circus Circus Manor Motor Lodge in Las Vegas.
“The room smelt bad... the door was broken... the carpets were dirty... the doors couldn’t lock securely.... cold showers.... TV hummed.... springs in your back....” the list of complaints is endless.
Diving enthusiasts from Britain found the Tropicana New Tiran Hotel in Naama Bay, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, to be – a dive!
“Our ground floor room was flooded by sewage overflow twice in the five days that we were there,” wrote one reviewer.
“We were then moved to another room on the top floor. This time, there was no sewage overflow but water started to drip from the smoke detector in the middle of the night. We had no compensation because the hotel claimed it’s not their fault.”
An American guest described it as “horrible”.
“The food was tasteless, smelled horrible and looked dirty. We had paid for breakfast and dinner, but instead we always went to the only good restaurant close by so we lost the money on the food we prepaid and this vacation cost us much more than we had ever planned to.”
A couple who went to the Goumen Hotel in Beijing, China, spent their entire holiday in quarantine because the hotel had been ‘re-purposed’ to house people exposed to swine flu.
“We asked to be released two hours early so we could make our flight home. The manager said probably not – but he’d let us know the morning of our departure. Never saw him again.”
Another reviewer wrote: “in all five continents I visited the last 50 years I have never been in such a run-down and dirty shack, not even in Africa or South America”.
In the Petra Palace Hotel in Jordan, a guest encountered a male cleaner knocking on his door at 6.30am to say hello and ask if he could wash his face in the sink.
In Valmangude Jardim Aparthotel in Albuferia, Portugal, a hapless traveller was the victim of robbers who had a key to all the rooms “and they somehow knew how to get into the safe!”.
The best-worst review, though, must go to the Hotel Fivos in Athens, Greece.
One reviewer wrote: “Liked – Leaving. Disliked – The period between check in and departure.”
* tripadvisor.com
