The Worst: Somewhere in Indiana, off I-65, is the dumpiest Dollar Inn in the world. $45. The carpet was orange and so stained it looked brown, nasty counters that looked like they’d never been cleaned, funky old 70’s furniture that had been through at least one bar fight. I’m usually not a neat freak but I wouldn’t walk on the floor without socks or shoes on. The towels smelled like bleach so I knew they were safe but the rest of the room smelled like a nicotine factory. Not to mention the loud heater, no plug in the sink, etc. Nasty!
One of the Best: Beaver Creek Inn, Beaver Creek, Pennsylvania. Going out to DC to see brother-in-law get married and we stopped here. Somewhere in the $30 range (early 90’s). You walked into the room and the bed was there but the wall which the bed’s headboard was against was made of obscured glass blocks which curved around to the door to the bathroom, which was tiled in black and pink. The shower was on the opposite side of that glass block wall. Very clean, very cool. Slept well and people that owned it were nice.
I love that Rd. I could sit in Buddy Beer ( I’ve heard this was knocked down this year ) all day. Always people to talk to, great beer, pool table and beautiful waitresses.
Oh my, does this thread bring back memories (or vague recollections…)-
At a drunken wedding reception in SoCal, the then BF & I decide to drive down to Mexico to keeping drinking.
When we get to Rosarito, we find a motel by the side of the highway, & go into the bar to get a key. It’s $20, not too bad.
The room seemed ok until we turned out the lights. No, not roaches or anything that obvious. Once our eyes adjusted to the gloom, we realized that we could see light from the next room around ALL FOUR SIDES OF THE WALL. Apparently, the only thing holding the wall up was the fact that it was jammed between two dressers, one in each room. Other than that disconcerting fact, the sheets were clean and we were drunk, so it was great.
Sorry to revive this thread from the dead, but I came across it in a search, and I’m beyond floored that another Doper has stayed in this hotel besides me.
Colin Wilkinson, when were you there? I crashed there with a friend for one night in the summer of '97. Your memories of it are perhaps a bit more charitable than mine…IIRC, we had spend to 20 minutes looking for someone just to come and unlock it for us (we, too, got the impression that no one had stayed there for months and months), and the rooms were on the dank and grubby side, even by Syrian standards. Had the last minibus not already left for Deir ez Zor, we probably would’ve just hightailed it back there for the night.
Abu Kamal was nothing to write home about, either…in a month in Syria, it was the only place that people were openly hostile to me b/c of my nationality (American). Being 5 miles or so from the [closed] Iraqi border probably didn’t help much.
Re: the OP, I think I might have a winner…the lone, unnamed hotel in Xieng Kok, Laos. I stayed there in Feb. 2000 - 10,000 kip for a gigantic bed w/mosquito net and communal squat toilet and cold shower. I split the room with two people, so with the exchange rate, it worked out to US$0.35 each. It was a pretty nice place, if you didn’t mind the fact that electricity had not yet reached the village (aside from a couple people who ran radios off of car batteries).
I don’t know if this is the cheapest, but it’s the most interesting.
This was this sleazy dive in Ocean View, which is a less-than-savory neighborhood in Norfolk, Virginia. I’d gotten royally drunk, and was pissed off. It was decided amongst my friends that it would be a good idea if someone baby-sat me for the night, as I was threatening to f*ck somebody up.
This one guy, Kenneth, decides that he wants the honors. We end up at this motel. He decides to take advantage of the situation. Now, Kenneth was a damage controlman in the navy, and they fix toilets. His hands did not look clean. I may have been drunk, but I wasn’t going to be unsanitary.
At some point, I passed out. When I got up in the morning and saw the place, I was horrified. The furnishings and decor looked to be circa 1950s, the linoleum floor was missing in places, and there may have been roaches. It chomped royal.
Got caught in a killer sleet storm and white-knuckled it until I could slide into The Motel From Hell in Harvey, IL. (The Ex stayed in the car, of course–the wimp!)
The “lobby” was a lineoleum alcove w/a drunk passed out on the floor. The owner–and a snarling Doberman–were behind the kind of bullet-proof windows that are in drive-through banks. (No, I am not joking.) The charge was $15–for the whole night!
The room was godawful; dirty and “decorated” in clashing shades of scarlet, crimson and neon pink. Not trusting the bedclothes, I pulled the “emergency” blanket out of the car and slept in my clothes. The bathroom was encrusted with things I still don’t want to think about. And the TV only played the kind of porn featuring farm animals and…well, let’s just say it was disgusting.
The only thing in its favor was that it was shelter, and not prone to skid on the ice. Fortunately the salt trucks got the highway cleared by early morning and we left post haste.
I’ve stayed in hundreds of motels over the years, mostly on business so they were better ones.
But one time my wife and I stayed in a dump in Lakewood, Wisconsin. I don’t remember the name of the place, but we refer to it as “The sign motel” because all over the rooms were little signs. “Please keep television volume to a minimum”, “Please use toilet tissue sparringly”, “Only 1 towel per guest please”, “Turn lights off when not in use”, “Please do not over flush toilet”, etc.
There were over 25 little plastic signs posted all over the room. We laughed our asses off at this. The place cost $22/night (this was 1994) it did not have cable t.v., pool, or anything. And the heat did not get very warm (it was February). But at least we had a lot of reading material…all those signs!
the cheapes place i ever stayed was $70
it was a full service marriott in gaithersburg md.
i dont know why it was so cheap, it was nice and i would feel fine paying $170 for it.
It was a Knight’s Inn. I think it was $34 for the (k)night or something absurd. My wife and I were on a road trip, and she insisted with “It’s a place to sleep, how bad can it be?”
Well, I used to be able to get a decent hotel for $20 in the late 70s.
Been a while, but I do remember staying in a hotel for $39. The place was clean, but the towels were a bit thin and there was only one bar of soap and no shampoo in the bathroom. The beds were also pretty stiff. They offered “free breakfast,” which turned out to be a box or two of donuts and coffee. We ate at the diner down the road.
A few rants: dont stay at the cheapest hotels near Disneyland. Both Alamo and Eden Roc have bedbugs.
America’s Best Value has huge scam issues at some of their locations: they will “lose” your reservations or refuse to honor it, then charge you more- often leading to a double charge. Also complains about extra housekeeping fees, and Credit card fraud. They particularly like to prey on women travelers.
The National headquarters is well aware of these scams, but do nothing.
Cheapest I bought and paid for have probably been a number of $19.95-39.95 Motel 6’s, most of which were decent (clean sheets and hot water), but one in El Paso I have a vague memory of me being scared to leave the room because of reasons (like I said, sketchy memory).
For ‘name’ hotels, my first visit to Las Vegas was at the Imperial Palace (because it is on the Strip and how bad can it be? Pretty damn bad, I can tell you. Only place I’ve had cockroaches (at least live ones) coming out of the plumbing.
For least cost, probably last year in New Zealand at a variety of Hostels (don’t know the price, part of a tour). Actually don’t have any major complaints, about 4-6 to a room but never had an issue–except for the night in Karikoura (sp), they said I would get a single room, and I did…and old bunk bed that appeared to have done duty in the local jailhouse…and nothing, I mean NOTHING else in the room. Dudes in Solitary at Supermax prisons have more amenities. And the drunken parties in Wellington at a place that was supposed to have no drinking…
But considering the hundreds of rooms I’ve been in on six continents, really not much to complain about.
I know I’ve stayed in cheaper places, but the one that comes to mind in a good way is the $69 Jameson Inn in Perry, GA - not that that’s so crazy cheap but it was significantly cheaper than all the other options, and we were nervous. It was the cleanest damned hotel I’ve stayed in in I can’t remember how long. I think maybe our room was an extra live-in suite for the operators or something, as it actually had a full kitchen, so I don’t think most of the rooms had a full size fridge. But it was impeccable. And came with a nice continental breakfast! Seriously, highly recommended.
I once stayed in a Masters’ Inn, which I know is cheap but do not remember how cheap. Not recommended. The maid came and cleaned it and I swear it smelled worse than before. There was a stray abandoned hair extension on the bathroom floor.
I just realized this is a zombie but I still feel it is useful information if you find yourself in Perry. (I also recommend the Zombie Run at the Guardian Center, that’s a hell of a good time.)
I used to stay in an old motel in the Ca desert near California city. It looked closed and abandon but it was open. I think on weekends off roaders would use it. I had weekdays off and I hunted birds in the area so it was convenient. An older Spanish lady ran it and she liked to come over and visit for a few hours at a time. She was actually very nice so I didn’t mind. I never saw another tenant the entire times I stayed there. Rooms were clean but beds were lumpy and worn out. Bathrooms were pretty sad. I don’t remember the price but it was cheap.
These seem rarer these days, but it used to be that you could get $12-something weekday hotel rooms at any number of “big casinos in small towns” in Nevada. (I forget what the exact price was, but it was always the same since it was apparently the state minimum or something like that.) Places like Primm, Mesquite, Wendover, Jackpot, etc. where they’re trying to draw people into the town in the first place so they’ll stay and gamble. I’ve stayed at plenty of them (as well as other sub-$20 rooms in Reno or wayyyyyyyy off the strip in Vegas) just for a place to stop for the night and, while they’re usually in very depressing casinos full of elderly compulsive gamblers, I’ve never had one of the rooms be anything worse than normal chain motel quality.
Me and a friend rented a room for $2 a night in Belize, in 1986. The door had a wire hook for a latch (no doorknob). There were two stained mattresses on the floor and that was about it. We stayed in a few places like that. The fancier ones had chicken-wire covered windows for ventilation.
It was not the worst place I’ve stayed. The antique furniture was quite charming-- lots of carved wood and rattan. The rooms were practically cavernous, and the bathrooms had hot water. Around the corner was a wonderful dining hall with all-you-can-eat food for fifty cents.
On the negative side, the rooms were atop a pretty boisterous gambling den, and cockroaches the size of your hands lurked in the (mercifully) dark corners.
I don’t think I"ve ever seen a hotel for less than $30/night, but I"ve stayed in several that were $30-40/night. Honestly can’t complain.
However I did once inquire about a weekly rental that was $200. When the manager opened the door I was hit with a wave of B.O. and opted out of that one.
I know I had a 6 dollar room at least once at Motel 6. There was a knock-off Motel 8 in Denver I remember from around 1970. Oh yeah, it was 8 bucks. I remember splurging for, maybe 12 or 15 dollars for a room with my road buddy in San Francisco on New Year’s Eve - 1971. At the Ritz Hotel on Eddie Street in the heart of the tenderloin.
