I’ll never be able to un-live this moment of hotel failure: Sleeping peacefully, I was slowly being lulled out of a dream by an intruder. She was disrobed and in the bed on top of me, suggesting in a quiet but sensual, Kathleen Turner-style voice that we “do it.” I whispered that I was a gay man and “sorry, but it just won’t work, believe me, no … no … NO.”
Boom. I jolted awake. To my horror, it wasn’t some weird dream — it was 100 percent reality. There was a woman on top of me who I’d met at a party earlier (and who knew my orientation). Long after I left, she came to my hotel, told the front desk she was my secretary, and they gave her a copy of my key!
It could have turned out much worse. I was twice her size and she was so intoxicated she passed out (I called her a cab when she came to). But one little lie connecting with one inept front desk person could have meant being robbed clean or, as my mother pointed out, death.
It’s hard to believe — not giving out guests’ keys to random people might sound like the most obvious responsibility of a hotel. But as you’ll see in the stories that follow, that hotel (a well known brand in Portland, Oregon) isn’t the only establishment with a big #fail in its book.
And there’s so. Much. More. The hospitality industry is filled with tales of blunders — from ceilings that leak with questionable liquids to sheets speckled with stains of indeterminate origin, and everything you just can’t make up in between. We’ve gathered some of the worst of the worst. So sit back, enjoy, and be thankful none of these people were you.
Trick or Treat?
Before settling in, he begins to hear screams of someone being stabbed and an awful, terrible crying along with rattling chains. “I flew out of my room to tell the front desk, and they then informed me that they had set up a haunted house in one of the rooms next to mine for kids staying at the hotel.” Because he’d moved so many times, he kept the room and endured the sounds all night long.
And no, they didn’t extend him a discount.
The Wrong Room
“We were in Denver and one of the guys we were traveling with woke up in the middle of the night with a strange, drunk man passed out next to him,” says a travel writer who would rather go unnamed. Turns out, the guy had forgotten both his key and his room number. When the intoxicated man went to the night clerk to sort things out, he blurted out any number he could think of “and the front desk just gave him a key, no questions asked!”
The Infestation
“We came back to the room, and immediately I saw a huge cockroach crawling over one of my bags,” says Joe, in his mid-30s. The couple killed the creature themselves, but that was just the beginning. “We pulled back the curtains, and they were literally crawling with cockroaches.” The couple stormed up to the front desk, which was curiously prepared with anti-cockroach spray. “The staff asked us if we had food in the room, which we didn’t, and then they asked if we had toothpaste, which of course we did.”
According to this hotel, cockroaches have a thing for the stuff. “We sprayed the room, aired it out, and cleaned the carcasses off the floor. I think were about twelve in total,” Joe says. There were no other rooms so the couple pulled the bed into the middle of the room, left the light on, and slept very little.
Drip, Drip, Drip. . .
A drippy faucet is annoying. A leaky ceiling is even worse. A ceiling oozing with human excrement? Ya don’t say! But someone on Trip Advisor did, with this baffling headline: “Great hotel for the price, but leaking raw sewage through ceiling” Hmmm. We’re not sure at what point value makes that kind of thing ok.
Or then there’s this couple, who talk about the sewage pipes bursting in the room next door, then seeping though — on the first of their nine-day stay. And this guy, who was put into a room that was already in the midst of a sewage leak. Time to ask for another room, folks.
That Had Better Be Chocolate
“I dared not approach, since there was nothing else in sight to suggest their nature. And yes, I thought the worst — so many people use the same sheets in a hotel that stains could go unchecked.” The writer called the front desk, which sent a member of the cleaning staff to investigate. Soon, they uncovered a half-eaten chocolate bar stuffed under the covers. “And this was a five-star hotel,” he says.
Careful Where You Work Out
As Ashley Norman, a publicist from New York City puts it, “How about the time I was doing sit ups in my hotel room in Chicago. I looked up and found a used condom stuck to the underside of the bed.” She jumped up and called the front desk, which sent up a young man with rubber gloves to remove the thing. “I guess that’s what I get for not going to the gym,” she said.
Hello Neighbors!
Author of Directions to Happiness Bruce Northam tells us: “I was in a hastily constructed hotel in Bali with my brother. I gave him a humorous shove and he bumped into the brick wall, which then completely collapsed! It was a stand-alone wall dividing two rooms. Hello neighbor!” They were staring at two Indonesian honeymooners.
The Succubus of the Sochi Games
By the time the journalists started to arrive, only six of the nine hotels were finished and people found themselves in rooms without heat, running water, Internet, or capable toilets. Doorknobs fell off and there were rumors of spy cameras in showers. What’s more? Hallways were strewn with dogs (probably hiding for their lives), elevators didn’t work, and at least one lobby had no floor.
The Michelin-Starred Spill
“We were having dinner at this five-star resort’s Michelin restaurant in Italy. We were sitting in the terrace when all of the sudden the outdoor Jacuzzi above busted and began to overflow onto all of us,” says travel TV personality and writer Jimmy Im. “People freaked out. We had already been served our food and it was completely ruined. They moved everyone’s seats, but we were already soaked. I felt really bad for the staff who had to deal with it.”