We are talking about overnight stays, right? Not the by-the-hour joints.
No, I think we especially want to hear about the by-the-hour joints! But only the worst ones.
Well, even those do by the night… just costs a bit more… or maybe less.
A hotel that I can’t remember the name of near Sigariya in Sri Lanka… $6/night and it was overpriced.
One that I passed on (better to sleep wild in the desert) was the Lord’s Hotel in Dogola, Sudan. It made Shamozzle’s look like the Ritz. 
Unfortunately I’ve never checked into a hotel, but there’s one near the turnpike that allegedly films the guests*when they rent by the hour. I’ve always wanted to go.
*Two separate people who have done maintenance work on the plumbing and electrical have stated this.
Libya in 2003, the hotel was clean, yet completely ramshackle. Doors falling off , bed had springs long since gone and no running water in the shower. Had to go down to the closed swimming pool to shower there. No food to speak of and the constant presence of security people hanging around smoking at the elevators on all floors and at random points along corridors. Watched constantly.
Only lasted one night, the Corinthia had just opened and I moved over the pronto.
A hotel which was basically cement breeze block unfinished shell with corrugated iron lid and a bed in it , somewhere by Rincon de los Sauces in the Patagonian desert ( Patagonia has some picturesque parts, most of it is flat and really not fun, or scenic). I received a hefty shock from the light switch in the bathroom, no edible food and healthy dose of 'las Malvinas Argentinas" , or maybe it was just me they didn’t like.
ok it wasn’t a hotel but I lasted two weeks on the Petrolia, a Pentagone type rig, famous for legs falling of and capsizing, or catching fire, or just being the Petrolia, replete with kitchen staff who like having hard core porn on in the galley 24/7. Trying to eat a breakfast sausage whilst hearing that is tough, watching the galley staff handle the breakfast sausage with eyes glued to the TV, was , disturbing.
When I first moved to Boston, I stayed at an extended-stay hotel. It was ok – clean and such, but I found that at least one hooker made that her base when she was in town.
That didn’t bother me (though some of her clients were sad, sad men).
What bothered me was when I noticed some meth users staying there. That was my cue to leave.
That hotel may well be gone now; a bunch of those mom-and-pop places went away during the Jax Beach gentrification of the 1990s.
Great story!
Along the Appalachian Trail there are multiple chances to stay at several of the worst hotels/motels. Some are even badges of honor, well known landmarks for thru hikers for a overnight stay and experience. Most are very old and can’t so much more then continue to have their establishment decay further each year. I really don’t want to mention any by name, as they are welcome trail services, even in their current conditions, which many hikers call home for the night, in that they are an overall positive little hellholes.
The Jayhawk Motel, in (if I remember correct) Lawrence, Kansas.
I checked in, sent the wife and kid to the room while I went to gas up the truck and grab a beer. I came back and saw the room and pulled the family out and got the hell out of there. There was a sign on the office window that said, “No refunds after 15 minutes”, but I casually mentioned the Health Department or Sherriff and they refunded me pronto.
Roachs running around. Filthy on every surface, floors, walls, ceiling. Mold and stains in the bathroom. An electrical outlet showed obvious signs of a recent fire. The TV cord was cut, and hooked up to bare wires twisted together. There was a section of carpet cut and removed. The “bedspread” was filthy and had a texture like 60 grit sandpaper. I’d seen enough to know I’d seen too much.
What a dump!
Motel 6 [obvious mistake] off Lee Rd. in Orlando. Newly remodeled when I went there. Checked in around 3am, and checked out a few minutes later after noticing the dead flies and hair everywhere. I went to a neighboring Comfort Inn and was very pleased— awesome breakfast.
Was it a good value though 
The worst ones I’ve been in have been Motel 6’s but they would all have to be combined to touch these. Separate ones:
– Only other guests there brought in others for a loud all night party. Was in a sketchy neighborhood so I didn’t want to complain.
– Had a functioning shower – but so small that I couldn’t bend over to clean the lower half of my body in it.
– Had a tiny lobby – around the size of the average room – that had 3 vending machines in it that blasted hot air right into the line, well over 100 degrees in there.
– Made a loud random thump – so loud that I thought I’d hear it everywhere.
I’ve had a few other bad experiences at other hotels but combined they cannot match Motel 6:
– Receptionist pretended not to see me so I left thinking that this may be a sign of other shortcomings.
– A guest seemingly at random shouted every half hour or so. Was not sure if they’d even be able to find them if I complained.
– A smell worse than your standard spicy food in the lobby – this was so intense you could still smell it in the rooms. This stay was ironic because it was a Super 8, and this was when I was exposed to a lot of Wyndham Rewards commercials, including a flyer in the hotel lobby, which convinced me to avoid Wyndham properties in the future.
Thankfully I’ve never run into dirtiness or safety issues.
The worst one I remember was from a family vacation back in the 70s. We were stopping in Harrisburg PA for the night. Mom found a Holiday Inn in the AAA travel guide. Turns out, it was “The Holiday Inn”, not at all associated with the hotel chain. It was dirty, smelly, the bathroom was gross… We hit the road as early as possible the next morning.
Two come to mind.
The King’s Arms Hotel, on the Isle of Skye, Scotland.
Old and decrepit. In and of themselves, those aren’t terrible things. Old and a bit broken down are okay, if things are reasonably clean and the plumbing works and the staff is pleasant. But the plumbing didn’t work. The toilet wouldn’t flush, and the pipes made gargling noises all night. And the shower didn’t work. And the room stank. And it was filthy.
Although the room was represented to us as a double room (and billed accordingly), it had a single bed. I went down to the lobby to say that there must have been a mistake, and was told that the hotel was full and that there was nothing that could be done until the next day. The woman at the desk was nasty and unpleasant. She suggested that I had attempted to defraud the hotel by booking a single room for a whole family (there were three of us – me, my wife and our (then) eighteen-month-old daughter). I pointed out that she had checked us in, she had seen that there were three of us, and that the hotel had provided, at my request, a fold-up crib for my daughter, so I was hardly trying to sneak extra people into a single room. Didn’t matter.
The next day I was able to get us switched to another room. It had a double bed, and the toilet worked, so things were looking up. But then I discovered that the shower didn’t work. I don’t mean just that there was inadequate hot water, I mean that there was no water at all.
Back down to the reception desk. I was told that they’d have the handyman look at it. Maybe later that day, maybe the next day. In the meantime, there was nothing they could do.
Back upstairs. Pissed off. I decided that this was unacceptable. Back to the reception desk. There was a different person at the desk. A ten-year old girl (seriously). She was actually somewhat helpful. She couldn’t switch our room, but she did give me the key to another room (apparently the room that the staff used to clean up and change and so on), and said we could use the shower there. So I did.
Horrible, horrible place, but the only game in town, so we were stuck.
The other was a place in Mexico. Somewhere in Chiapas, I think. I’ve forgotten the name. I was traveling with my then-girlfriend (not the woman who became my wife – this was years back). It was basically a truck stop, and a bit scary-looking, but we’d been driving for hours and didn’t want to be out too late (there was some unrest in Chiapas at the time).
There was a bar attached to the hotel. I was tempted – I was hungry and thirsty – but it was truly scary. There was loud music (which went on all night), rough-looking men all over, obvious prostitutes working the bar (and staying in the hotel).
Still, we needed sleep. Nothing bad happened, so we just chalked it up to experience.
We hit one in Mass. once that was sketchy enough that the clerk asked us if we wanted to check our room before checking in. The place looked like something from some bad movie; most of the other guests were clearly stoners, aged hookers, and a few midgets. Seriously – little people. It looked like some really bad bottom-rung porn shoot. The place itself had last seen any real care or up-dating around the Eisenhower administration. But it was really clean and we were tired and everything was fine.
Another, one of the chains, (Super 8 maybe?) down in Georgia you could still see where someone had broken the door in and there was something that really looked like a large blood stain on the floor. There were other choices nearby so we opted out of that one and went across the road.
Two summers ago, my family took a weekend trip to Moab, in central Utah. We booked a stay at the Ramada Inn Express in Green River, Utah, because it was the only dog-friendly motel in town.
Here is my hotels.com review, titled “Worst experience ever at a national chain.”
Seriously, those were the kind of stoners that give stoners a bad name. :smack:
I lived at the Hickory Hills Motel in Hickory Hills, IL for awhile when I was 18 (back in 1984). I almost died (gas leaks). It’s since been torn down.
We use travel guides so haven’t been in anything really sketchy. The worst was like the one in My Cousin Vinny only there was a fence between the motel and the tracks so we had no idea they were there until a train went through.
Not quite in the category of “worst ever”, but we stayed in one memorable place in Rhode Island that had beds worse than I had imagined possible. I think they used plywood as mattress pads. And I found a lacy black and blue thong under a bed when I was looking for my daughter’s stuffed animal that she had lost.
Well, the most famous bad hotel I’ve stayed in was the Hotel de la Paix in Paris. Turns out there’s several, so for clarity, is the seedy hotel featured in the Bourne Identity movie.
It was cheap, and… it was cheap. I had a room with an ensuite bathroom, for which the door was never supposed to close. Well, I closed it and got locked in. My travelling companion went to the front desk to ask for help and there were language issues, so the fire brigade was called when the manager believed I had died on the toilet. The call was cancelled very quickly, a screwdriver was procured, and I was rescued in a less dramatic fashion.
Honestly, other than the silly story and the fact it was in a feature film, I would have to say that the Hotel de la Paix was really, truly, a cheap place to stay in Paris.
The actual worst hotel was a guesthouse in Luang Prabang, Laos. I had just rolled into town and had a heck of a time finding anything. One place said they had one room and took me to a detached cinder block structure far out back. We flipped on the fluorescent light and were attacked by moths the size of ping pong balls. The roof did not actually attach to the walls in order to keep bugs out – instead, the tin roof rested on wood blocks that held it suspended over the walls by about 18 inches.
Well, I declined and looked for another room in town. No luck, so I returned. I paid for a night and then had dinner at a restaurant down the street – one of the best meals I’ve ever had – and returned to go to sleep. I flipped on the light, had a battle with Mothra’s illegitimate young, and prepared to lay down. Then I had an idea.
I should look under the mattress of the cot.
I lifted up a corner, and it looked like a scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. There were pill bugs. There were centipede looking things. There were maggots. There were other things I couldn’t identify that had too many legs and insufficient amounts of cuteness. And I stood there, holding the mattress up, and I said out loud to myself, “This is not good.” But what choice did I have?
I swept the mattress with a piece of cardboard, flinging the creepies onto the floor where they held an impromptu protest in favor of insect housing rights, and then scurried off to the darkness. I fitting the mosquito net I brought with me above the cot, and tucked the ends under the mattress as best as I could. I went to sleep, and awoke in the morning to find that I didn’t get bitten by anything. Miracle!
I guess the room was worth the $1.25 I paid for it.