Accidentally booked a motel in a sketchy part of town for a work trip. When we showed up to the front desk the owner (a Danny Devito look-alike, but with a much creepier vibe) and a tall, skinny receptionist with a strong Russian accent checked us in. The owner said that a truck was going to show up in the morning with new furniture and asked if we wanted to help unload. We laughed because we thought he was joking. But he just stared at us waiting for an answer. After a few awkward moments we said no thanks and laughed nervously as we went to our rooms.

My coworker knew some people in town so she left to hang out with them, so I was just alone in my room. When I got into the room, it had the typical musty smell and dingy look of a bad motel. But then I saw something. On the wall by the door was a blood splatter. Not like a drop, a legit splatter. I didn’t want to complain to the creepy management, especially since I was now alone. So I locked the doors, pulled the curtains, and tried not to touch anything the rest of the night.

The next morning I left my room to checkout and ran into the tall Russian woman. Now she was wearing a maid outfit and cleaning the rooms. Across the parking lot, the manager was unloading furniture from a truck. I quickly dropped off my keys in the office and went to work.

Accidentally booked in a bad part of town. Front desk was behind bars. The room was nothing like they showed online. Later we ordered delivery and they refused to leave their car.

Another time we did a test flush before using the toilet and the handle broke. Front desk was rude as hell. Someone fixed it within in an hour. The maintenance lady said it was common and they have been replacing them with upgrades as they break.

I was planning a long road trip that I could have done all at once, but decided to break into two days with a hotel stay somewhere near the middle. I was on a bit of a budget, so when I found a room for ~$60, I was thrilled.

When I got there, the shower handle was plumbed backwards (so the “Cold” direction was hot), the first towel on the rack had brown splatters that were very clearly old blood stains, and while I was showering a big roach wandered up onto the lip of the shower like “S’up, bro,” then meandered off like he did this sort of thing every day.

The bed was about as cushy as a gym floor mat, the pillows were bricks, and when I sat down on the desk chair to put on my shoes, the whole thing just about collapsed under me.

The review I left said: “The best $10 hotel room that $60 can buy,” and since then I just make all my road trips in one go if I can’t afford to spend at least $100 for a hotel room.

there was this hotel we always used to go to with my family during vacation, nothing exceptional but it was pretty cool. Then one year, for whatever reason, our two rooms were full of worms, on the floor, walls, curtains…they were everywhere. I don’t think we’ve ever went back after that year

We found a frog in our room once. That’s the one and only time I’ve gone back to the front desk and said “get me another room”.

Side note: I’m British so it was a lot more polite than that. Conflict is not our jam.

I have stayed in one brand of hotels most of my career because I love them but at one point a showerhead shot off into my back and a laser-beam like steel-cutter of water tried its best to cut me in half before I got out of its way. It was like a shower head on a ball joint with a pinhole in it. I really hope they changed their shower head design after that.

When I was a kid my mom and I would occasionally take little overnight trips to random towns we’d never been. Just open a map find a place a few hours away and go there and see what’s up. Mind you, this is before the days of the internet and GPS, and when I say a kid I’m like 8 or 9 I think?

Anyways mom opens up the map, says this little town right on the coast looks neat let’s go there, and off we went. The town was neat! Little sea-side fishing village. I don’t remember it super well, but I remember walking on the pier and my mom letting me spend some allowance money on Pogs and a metal slammer. I do remember that slammer, Ricky from Kindergarten, and I FUCKING KNOW YOU TOOK IT.

Anyways we conclude our tour of the pier and start looking for hotels and not a single room is available. There’s several hotels in the town, but they’re all booked up, turns out the little fishing village is busy like one week a year for some annual get together and this is that week. People were kind, calls were made, and a room was found at a local motel on the edge of town.

The carpet was sticky. The carpet was sticky. The tub was covered in some kind of dirt and/or stain that was gross enough for my mom to tell me to just skip showering. We slept, clothed, on top of the blankets and laid down towels to walk on the floor. My mom says she thinks it was an “hourly” motel, when she thinks back on it.

After that any time we took an “adventure” like that she made sure to find a room when we first go to the place rather than the end of the day lol.

I was making my way over-land from Vietnam to China and there was only one train a day from this town and the border crossing took too long.

So here I am stuck in this tiny border town and I go to the only “hotel” in town.

The “bathroom” did not have a toilet, just a 3 inch sewer opening where a toilet should have been. I had to aim as best I could. The bed was obviously rough, I did not trust the sheets at all that looked dirty. Luckily I brought my own little sarong I could put down. Too hot for any blankets luckily.

Later that evening the hotel keepers son kept bringing girls to the room to try to sell, and his parents were cussing him out over it at the top of their lungs while he was trying to present them.

The “hotel” was not approved for foreigners and the hotel keeper was adamant I get out of there early in the morning before the police came by.

That was quite the welcome to China, and the next two very long days in “hard seat” class on a meter gauge rail line winding through China, while beautiful, about broke my spirit.

Every other hotel I’ve been to in Japan was excellent, but this one was… not.

We walk in, the clerk didn’t speak any English. That’s fine, I don’t expect any different, and my travelling companion grew up in Yokohama and is fluent. (But is relevant in a second.)

Got to the room, sat down on the futon (a mat on the floor, very common in Japanese hotels that don’t cater to foreigners), and I look at the pretty spotted pattern on the wallpaper.

Then I realized that the spots were moving.

Then my companion noticed the same moving spots on the blankets we were sitting on, it was some type of small round beetle.

We immediately marched down to the front desk to demand a refund and leave. Except that my companion can’t do that, Japanese is too polite to demand. So I had to start yelling in English (a great language for yelling, even (especially?) if the listener doesn’t speak it). We finally got a refund and headed out to find a place that wasn’t crawling with bugs.

Got bedbugs at a Comfort Inn near Columbia, MD. That was actually the second room they gave me. First one’s fridge was broken. They offered me a free future stay at that hotel. Needless to say they got the shittiest review I’ve ever left a hotel.

We read the reviews, we figured it couldn’t be that bad. It was worse. https://maps.app.goo.gl/Vd7ce36pNzdWb5vRA

Funny that this thread hit my feed last night. I don’t have a special story to tell, but every summer my buddy and I go to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin to Road America to watch some racing. We used to camp but we’re in our mid thirties now so I’m a bit over sleeping outside in the summer. We’ve stayed in some cheap hotels before because that’s really all my buddy can afford. No big deal, don’t wanna break the bank for him so I’m down staying in a subpar hotel.

Cue me reading this thread last night and remembering I booked at the Super 8 Motel in Sheboygan. I go back to my booking and look at the reviews. Reports of bed bugs, holes in the walls, broken AC, ground level windows without locks, all that. Also reports of sketchy people hanging out in the parking lot all hours of the night, drinking and yelling. I find a slightly better place nearby but not that much better. Then I decided to expand my search radius to include Fond Du Loc. I find a place that looks fancy as fuck with an average review score of 9.4/10 on Hotels.com called the Hotel Retlaw. It’s $20 more each per night (4 night stay).

At this point I have 3 hours left to cancel my Super 8 Motel reservation before I can’t get a refund. I call my buddy, send him a link to the Hotel Retlaw, and said dude, I will cover the difference for you ($80 extra each if you are down for me to switch it up). He agrees immediately, I cancel the reservations at the shit box motel and book these. I’m out an extra $160 total but that’s SO worth it for a nice place to stay, especially when we’re outside sweating all day. The whole weekend ticket is only $160 so it’s not an expensive vacation.

I leave tomorrow morning so I’ll report back about it if I remember, but if you read all this, look up those two places and tell me how different they look for an insignificant price increase. I have a feeling if I didn’t read this thread and go search again, I’d be posting here after this weekend about getting bed bugs or some shit.

A whole floor flooded but honestly they handled it well and moved us to dry rooms.

We should have asked for a different room but the thermostat wasn’t working right so all night the room was something like 27 or 28C. We opened the window only to discover our room was above the entrance to the hotel. We didn’t sleep well that night.

Took my now ex wife to a fancy hotel to have some time alone. We had just arrived and gotten settled in, she forgot her phone in the car so I ran down to get it. While I was looking at it to pick it up, a text came through and I saw enough of it from the notification popup on the lock screen to see she was planning on having another guy come for sex when I left for work in the morning. I of course open the phone and check the entire message history to confirm that’s what she was planning. I got pissed, threw her phone in the gutter, checked out of the hotel asking for a refund and went home, leaving her there.