I was at a company retreat in Vermont at a beautiful old hotel, a woman said to me, “I can see dead people, and there are a lot of them here, especially in the bathrooms.” Well, I didn’t make too many bathroom breaks.
Best - Four Seasons in Nevis the year it opened. Everything was new and it was not crowded. If we left the room for 15 minutes someone would have come in, cleaned, and left us more chocolates.
Worst - I have had hotels “lose” confirmed reservations twice. The grossest was a motel along I-90 in Spokane, 1980. It had been pouring rain, we stopped at probably 15 places along I-90 before finally finding a place. We got the last room at the motel. There were two queen beds made up, extra stained mattresses propped against the wall, moldy rugs rolled up, and 6 tvs, none of them working. My brother and I got in one bed, my dad in the other. Soon, our pajamas were wet. Someone had peed on the mattress and they moved it to the dump room and put sheets on it. We got a tarp and our sleeping bags out of the car and slept on the floor. A few hours later we packed up and left.
Wow, I thought I had bad hotel experiences–I concede–many listed above are MUCH worse.
I stayed at 2 hotels where the room door was NOT secure. In the first hotel was in Kona, any key opened any room door. I misread the digits and barged into someone else’s room that my old fashioned key opened. Fortunately the people were chatting and sitting fully clothed on the bed and didn’t seem too upset. I slept with the dresser against the door both nights that I was at the hotel.
The second hotel was in Canada. I was late for a meeting but found I couldn’t lock my door. I called the front desk and asked to be given a room with a functioning door lock. They sent someone up to confirm the lock didn’t work but didn’t understand why I refused to just keep that room. Reluctantly they did give me a room with a locking door.
I stayed at a Holiday Inn near USC where we were jolted from our sleep with loud acrobatics and swearing from the next door. We called the front desk and eventually it quieted–next night was same thing! We never stayed in that hotel with paper thin walls again.
We stayed at the USC Raddison that had scalding HOT water in the toilet tank and only scalding water in the shower for over $300/night, minimum of 3-4 nites! We complained and got relocated but told them it was a serious safety hazard–not sure it was ever fixed.
My sister got bed bugs that she brought home from a NICE LA hotel.
Basically, I want a clean firm bed, quiet, and preferably no odors, as quiet as possible. Private bath is better, especially if H is staying with me. View is optional. I’ve stayed in many very nice hotels. Can’t think of a favorite offhand.
We once stayed at a Georgia Peachtree Hyatt for about $45/night for all 4 of us. The kids were young and ate off the kiddie menu for $4/person. It was very conveniently located and H’s per diem easily covered lodging costs. It seemed to be a lovely new hotel and was nicely-located.
I also stayed once at the Willard Hotel with a friend – bid on Hotwire and paid for by business per diem. It was a grand old place and had a fabled gorgeous dining room. We would eat lightly during the day and then have elegant dinners with impecable service and flambé deserts! I tried to take my family there but it is now only open for catered and special events.
We also stayed at a lovely Ayres Inn & Suites, bid on Hotwire. It was close to Claremont and very nice, especially for under $50/nite with free parking and breakfast.
The best hotel ever was The Connaught in London in 2003. It was being remodeled and so the room was discounted down to reasonable prices. My cousin came to London to have dinner with us and we had dinner in the hotel. The chef was Gordon Ramsay, before he was famous. We were seated in the back corner of the restaurant, near the kitchen door, and our waiter was an acne-riddled young man of about 19. My cousin asked if he knew her goddaughter, who had interned in the front office there a few months before. The young man blushed and said “yes”. We got absolutely amazing service from that point on. AMAZING. Extra tiny amuse-bouches. Appetizers. Little plates between courses. A complementary dessert tray of 24 tiny scoops of 24 different ice cream flavors, things like cardamom cinnamon and lemon cream. After dinner–which took about three hours of impeccable service–DH and I adjourned to our room and fell into a deep sleep. In the middle of the night, I woke up and said “these sheets are great” and DH said “we should buy some.” Went to Harrod’s the next day and they’d just sold all their Frette sheets to a Saudi Arabian mogul (25000 pounds worth of sheets, it took multiple servants to carry the bags). Back at the hotel, disappointed, we mentioned it to the doorman. Turned out we could buy a set of the sheets from the hotel! At a quite-reasonable price, about half what Harrod’s would have charged, had they had any.
As for the worst hotel? On a trip with my inconsistently frugal mother, we stayed at a place on Florida’s west coast that jutted out over the Gulf. Literally. At high tide, you could look down between the floor boards, which had a sizable gap in spots, and see the ocean below. The only phone was a payphone across the street. The sheets were sandy. The bathroom was (euphemistically) not very clean.
The second worst hotel? The Park Central in NYC. Cockroaches in the bathtub.
Best - Fairmont Pacific Rim where you could sit in the heated outdoor swimming pool trying to catch falling snowflakes.
Worst - 1997 stay at the Red Roof Inn near Disneyland. The walls were paper-thin… There was some really loud activity going on behind that wall. And the room was in a bad need of a repair.
Best - the French Quarter Inn in Charleston. Gorgeous room, perfect service, favorite hotel ever.
There are several kinda bad hotel stories I could relate but thankfully they don’t compare to some of these - yikes! We’ve only ever had to leave one place: a Motel 6 when our two oldest kids were just toddlers. We weren’t expecting much, but there was a huge puddle of cleaning fluid in the middle of the floor in our room. Which wasn’t all that clean, so how did it get there? Our eyes literally burned as soon as we walked in and there was no way I’d let two kids stay there.
@BunsenBurner - paper thin walls! So many hotels have them. I was awakened at a nice Residence Inn a few years ago by an extremely enthusiastic couple in the adjacent suite. What do you do?
@frazzled1, DH and I are traveling to Charleston for the first time in April. I had no idea how to choose between hotels, but I eventually settled on the French Quarter Inn! Your endorsement is appreciated. 
I just remembered a motel in Dripping Springs, Texas. DH and the girls and I walked into our room. D1 screeched from the bathroom that someone had left a huge load in the toilet and didn’t flush.
We checked out immediately. That was just too much.
Oh yes, a found a dead rat or mouse is our room in a trap at Hotel Manx in SF once. Other than that, the room was OK.
Best hotel experience ever: at the Mohonk Mountain House in upstate NY, many moons ago… when we arrived, late in the evening, we discovered that the hotel had been closed to guests because there was a movie being filmed there. Since I was visiting as a travel writer, they allowed me to keep my reservation. As we were checking in, the desk clerk mentioned to another staff person that Anthony Hopkins had called to request a pot of tea brought to his suite. I said to my companion “OMG, maybe we’ll run into him… that would be the best birthday present ever…” (the next day was my birthday). I did some late-night exploring of the wonderful common rooms, but alas, bumped into no movie stars. The next morning, at breakfast, it was fun to see the actors and extras milling around in costume. As we were enjoying our breakfast, my friend said “Oh, look, there’s Anthony Hopkins!” and I sat, completely awestruck, as he walked directly over to our table and said “May I join you?” I don’t think any intelligible sound came out of my mouth… I just nodded. “Please, call me Tony,” he said as we shook hands… (I didn’t call him anything-- I couldn’t speak!) He sat and had coffee (or tea?) with us for about fifteen minutes, until they called him on set. I honestly have no memory at all of any of our conversation (my friend assured me later that yes, I actually did manage to engage in a little bit of a dialogue with him…) and, as “Tony” got up to leave, he said “I hope you have a truly wonderful birthday, my dear” and kissed me on the cheek. Without a doubt, my most special hotel experience (even if it was an obvious setup by the management, to ensure a good hotel review)!
These days, one of my necessities is the availability of a thin blanket for the bed. It seems that most hotels that tout luxury bedding include only a thick duvet or featherbed type of covering. Unless I cool the room to below 60 degrees, a covering that thick is just way too much. It is obvious that perimenopausal women were not consulted by the bedding designer people - lol.
Oh yea, because of our numerous allergies and sensitivities, we really need hotels that are as low odor/scent as possible and also no mold, mildew, or similar anywhere in the room. I really don’t care about how fancy/plain the place is, as long as the bed is firm, comfortable and clean, and the plumbing in the private bathroom works properly. We tend to do better with more recently renovated places because they tend not to have mold/mildew or other scents that trigger our allergies as much as older places.
I hope someone from the hotel industry reads this. People want quiet rooms, so soundproof your walls.
You have the notes asking people to keep their towels to save energy. Great! We all want to do that. So why not provide lots of towel bars, not only in the bathroom, but in the room, so they can actually dry? Because I’m not going to just hang them on your inadequate rods to mildew.
Your duvets are lovely. Please wash the covers after every guest. And those decorative pillows that make the bed so pretty? Gross!
Thanks for the TV. Please have the volume set very low when I turn it on so that it doesn’t disturb anyone. And limit how high I can adjust the volume. If I’m hard of hearing, I’ll use earphones.
Heavy people are a fact of life. And they stay here. And they sleep in the middle of the bed, which causes the mattress to turn into a canoe. Please change the mattresses more frequently, so that when two skinny people sleep in the bed, they aren’t rolling into a ditch.
I know you’re a super fancy, high class hotel, but sometimes, people really just want to wash their own underwear, so please have a guest washer available in an out of the way place. Even rich people don’t always want to pay $10 to have their panties washed.
Best - the Ritz Carlton in Chicago very elegant
Worst - dumpy motel when we visited Muhlenberg College (don’t know why I picked it). Turned out it was a truckers hotel - we were the only ones without an 18 wheeler parked in the lot.
We have been in hotels 2-3 time where the fire alarm went off - but they were always false alarms. Was also in a boutique hotel in DC where there was no shower door and the bathroom door was a sliding glass panel. The shower drain was in the middle of the bathroom floor - which kind of made sense since the whole bathroom was the size of a shower except it had a toilet and sink in it. The room was also so small that you could barely fit to walk around the bed. This was not a cheap place - probably a few hundred a night!
Best Hotel room ever = Upgrade to a three bedroom suite at the Waldorf Astoria Towers in NYC
2nd best - A junior suite at the Westin Vendome with a little balcony and amazing view of the Eiffel Tower
Great Hotels I would stay at again in a heart beat - The St. Regis Deer Valley, the Peace Lodge in Costa Rica and the Majestic in Barcelona.
The hotel I miss the most - The Four Seasons in the Exumas - it was a very sad day when it closed.
So bad we checked out = Maura Lani in Hawaii because the room smelled so strongly of insecticide and they refused to move us.
^My best ever was a condo in Mauna Lani on the golf course with an ocean view. Spectacular!
One of the nicest hotels I’ve stayed in was the Chicago Hilton. U of Chicago had reserved a bunch of rooms for accepted students weekend. The room had his and her bathrooms. In Jordan we stayed in a bunch of three star hotels. They considered it a big treat to put fresh fruit in the room all tightly wrapped in saran wrap. As I recall, a banana, two apples and a pear. Our driver also gave us fruit the first day. I’d rather have had something local! The Jordan hotels were funny - everyone was really nice and I loved the breakfast, but each one would have something just slightly not up to par. (Hence the 3 vs 5 star experience.) One room had no shower curtain, another only one bedside lamp.
Back when I was young I stayed at a few Motel 6’s when they really did only cost $6. They were clean, but boy those walls were thin!
I sure think the Mohonk Mountain House deserves that review if they persuade Hopkins to give you a treat. My husband used to go there on department retreats. I always wanted to go, but didn’t have anywhere to stash the kids. Now that the kids are gone, the department doesn’t spend money on retreats any more. Rats.
Best: Banyan Tree Koh Samui
Literally a friction-free resort, with few kids, private pool villas, a private beach, and a dedicated “butler” for each villa. Crazy conspicuous consumption, but wow.
Necessities: cleanliness, location near my destination(s), great free wi-fi, excellent hotel bar.
Share your best or worst hotel experience
Since our youngest started college, my husband and I have started traveling a good deal. Our idea of ‘best’ fluctuates depending on our wants for a particular trip. Sometimes proximity to sights takes precedent over amenities. Other times we may compromise on location.
Also, we like long trips to multiple locations…3 cities, 5-6 days in each. In those instances we plan a stay at a place with laundry facilities in the middle of the vacation.
So with that in mind I’ll share some of our recent ‘best’ experiences.
Best:
In Stockholm, we enjoyed the Lydmar. (great location, wonderful breakfast buffet, very helpful staff.)
In Berlin, the Mandala was amazing. (great location, another wonderful breakfast buffet, washer/dryers available on each floor)
In Houston, the Lancaster (great downtown location for our Cubs/Bears road trip vacation, convenient shuttle service and very helpful staff)
In Beijing, the Fairmont Beijing (WOW!!! amazing in EVERY way)
In Honolulu, the Moana Surfrider (great location-but can be noisy if you get a room on the street side, very good breakfast buffet, a lot of brides…lol)
Thanks to TripAdvisor we haven’t had a bad experience in a very long time.
Hotel necessities:
- clean
- safe area/surroundings
Preferences: - safe in the room
- good concierge
- proximity to good, casual dining…whether on the premises or not
- relatively quiet
- we definitely adjust our expectations based upon the destination and the cost of the room