Hotels are usually a great place for people to stay while on vacation. They're clean, have everything a person could need for traveling, and are well within a person's budget. Expect, not every hotel can be as ideal as someone would like.
Travelers on Reddit share the worst hotel experience they've ever had. Content has been edited for clarity.
“Excuse Me”
“My dad went to a hotel once and checked in to a first floor room. He went in the room, put his stuff down, opened the curtains…and a man was hiding there.
My dad went ‘Excuse me,’ closed the curtains, got his stuff and left.
Went to the front desk to explain that a man was hiding in his room. Turns out the guy had just robbed a place and somehow got into the room with an open window.”
“I Don’t Blame You”
“I needed to find a hotel in Dayton, OH because of my daughter’s gymnastics competition. I read online reviews and the Travel Lodge there got good reviews. The price was good too, so I booked it.
I had difficulty finding it because it was dark and their sign wasn’t lit. Parking lot was pitch black. Just outside the entrance, there were two sketchy guys that looked like they were negotiating a narcotics deal.
Inside the motel lobby was dimly lit with flickering lights. The room was no better. Stained sheets, holes in the bedspread and hair in the shower. The fitness room consisted of a stair stepper that was broken and an old TV on the ground that was also broken.
I told the front desk I wanted to cancel our reservation.
She said, ‘I don’t blame you. This place is gross. I had an interview at Kohl’s, and I hope they hire me so I can quit this place.'”
“He Would Not Comment”
“My family and I checked into a casino hotel in Shreveport, La. Put our stuff in the room and then went to the casino. We came back hours later, and could not get into our room. Looking for answers, we all went down to the front desk to find out why the card key was not working. I was informed that our room had to be exterminated due to ‘an infestation.’
When I inquired about the type of infestation, I was told that the desk clerk was not allowed to divulge that information. So, I went and got the hotel manager. He lead us back to our room, let us in and the place was tossed: furniture overturned, mattress off of bed, etc. There was our luggage and belongings pretty much where we left them. Manager than took us to our new room and gave us the key cards for it. I asked how the heck do you check someone into a room then discover it is infested with whatever? He was unable to adequately answer my question.
I asked him about what type of extermination chemicals they used, because our stuff had been exterminated as well. He again would not comment. Wound up throwing out any consumables, didn’t wear anything from our luggage and checked out early the next morning, never to return again to that hotel. When we got home, we washed everything in the hottest water available. As an aside: itched for a couple of days afterward but this was probably power of suggestion.”
“I Was Not In The Best Mood”
“This happened over Christmas time in China. I came back to the hotel after dropping my boyfriend off at the airport, so I was clearly not in the best mood. I stepped into the room, only to find a lot of my belongings moved around the room and items missing. Including my passport.
There was food that she moved into the bathroom, my deodorant was in the shower and my shower gel was on the TV cabinet, things were taken out of my suitcase and other items were put into my suitcase, jewelry was on the floor etc. Just really random stuff had been moved.
I had to go to reception and try to speak Mandarin (I was studying) and explain the situation. My passport was the main issue, and I managed to get it back but I had gifts from my mum that were thrown out.
Turns out, the cleaner had taken my passport with the sheets to the laundry room. Which is crazy, as it was actually in a cupboard (no safe available). Checked out two weeks early and got a refund for all the missing items, as she admitted to throwing them away. But, she wouldn’t say anything about why she had gone through my things or why she had moved anything.”
“Felt Like I Was In The Twilight Zone”
“I paid like $300 a night to stay at a fancy hotel for work in Park City, Utah in the summer for a conference. They put me in this room with a kitchen and a living room and so many doors. Like four closed doors. So I go to open one and it’s locked. And the next one is locked. All of them are locked. Then, I realize there is no bed. Not even a couch bed. Just a couch. They literally gave me a room that didn’t have a bed. It was the adjoining living room for other hotel rooms.
I checked my reservation and it said I booked a room with a bed. I felt like I was in the twilight zone when I went to the lobby, and asked where was my bed at my hotel and they didn’t see the problem. It took almost three hours to get it sorted while I’m arguing that paying for a hotel is for the bed.”
“My Eyes Snapped Open”
“At the peak of Comdex’s popularity in Las Vegas, I got stuck at the Tropicana. In those days, the infrastructure in Vegas couldn’t handle the Comdex influx. My flight landed at midnight, but it took me until 4:00 AM to get to the hotel and wait through a 300 person line at the front desk.
When I finally collapsed in my bed and entered that hazy almost asleep state, it occurred to me that I was wet. Why should I be wet, I thought hazily. Then my eyes snapped open – I should not be wet. I jumped out of bed and pulled the covers back to see that pee had soaked out of the mattress, and the sheets were soaked and yellow with it. Clearly the maids had realized that the previous guest had peed the bed, as they had placed a towel under the fitted sheet.
So, yeah, I had been lying in someone else’s pee.
The worse part is, this was my second room, as the 1st room they gave me a key to was occupied by a startled man in his underwear.”
“We Took Those Instructions Too Seriously”
“I was about four at the time, so this is mostly based off my siblings stories, even though I remember a few still shots.
We were at a hotel with some family friends and their kids (five kids total, us included, ages 4-13). Parents put us all in the same room to chill in the evening as they went out to do adult things (probably a fancy dinner).
I was chilling on the bed watching a movie, and then all of a sudden we heard a loud noise. The floor vibrated a bit, and then, hundreds if not thousands of mini spiders started flowing up the walls, in from two of the bottom corners in the room.
After a butchered attempt to defend our ground by using marshmallows and ice cubes as projectiles, we huddled up in the bathroom where we had the bottom of the door sealed with a towel. I slept in the bathtub with my sister that night. There were no phones to call for help (this was before kids/teens ever had cells) and we were very clearly instructed to not leave the room under any circumstances. We took those instructions a bit too seriously.
My parents discovered the crime scene in the middle of the night, and probably woke up the whole floor with their initial scream. We all ended up okay though.”
“Then, The Door Opens”
“I checked into a hotel the morning of my wedding. The first thing I notice is a cellphone charging on the desk. I call the front desk, and they have somebody come get it. I then proceeded to take a shower and start preparations to get ready for said wedding. There is a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door. I get out of the shower and dry off, then walk into the room barely holding a towel in front of me.
Then, the door opens. The maid unlocks the door and walks in without knocking. I frantically cover up and ask why the heck she’s entering without permission, and ask her to leave. She doesn’t. She says she forgot her phone in the room. I inform her they took it to the front desk and ask again for her to leave. She continues to talk about her phone and come further into my room as I am barely covered in a towel. I more loudly tell her it’s at the front desk and to leave immediately. Continues to blabber about her dang phone and how she needs the pictures from it. Yell for her to get the heck out. Finally, I get her out and have to call security.”
How Did They Find Such A Place?
“This was 1999. My buddies came up to visit me in Ottawa for reading week. The deal was we all agreed to visit each other over that week once for every year of university. So during our first year, we all went to see Rob. The next year we all went to see Tony (which was cheap because he went to school back home), year three we went to Bert, and the last year they came to see me.
One problem. I had a bad roommate experience in my second year, and I lived alone in a tiny apartment, basically a heated shed. So there was literally nowhere for them to sleep in my place.
I asked them how much they were okay with paying per night for a place, and I would of course go in with them. They said $50 a night. I misunderstood and thought they meant $50 a night TOTAL, not each ( which would be $200 a night). So I scoured the city and found a place for $55 a night that was on a direct bus line to downtown bars. They arrive on the train five hours late. The train had significant difficulties involving some sort of livestock barricade. Anyway, I grab them and we take a cab over to the motel, which was in a sketchy part of town. I had already checked us in, so we headed straight upstairs and Rob is like, ‘Dude, how expensive is this town if THIS place is $200 a night?!’
Me: ‘It’s not. It’s $55. I told you I couldn’t find anything cheaper.’
Rob: ‘We meant $50 each, you moron.’
I apologized, but at least there was a McDonald’s next door and a convenience store for whatever we needed? So we went out, grabbed some McD’s, grabbed some drinks, walk out and two guys in masks head in. Tony doesn’t notice them, but I do and calmly whisper to him to increase his walking speed because I think they’re about to get robbed. His reaction?
‘WHAT!?’ he exclaims, and he runs as fast as he can back to the motel. Rob and Bert aren’t buying that the place is getting robbed until about 10 minutes later, when the cops are all over the place. We calm down and watch some TV and start drinking. Tony falls asleep and proceeds to start snoring so loudly he was drowning out the TV. We’re all laughing at him at this point and just decide to keep drinking. At some point we ran out of ice, so rock paper scissors later, Bert loses and grabs the bucket. He returns five seconds later and says:
‘Drink your drinks warm, boys.’
Why?
‘Go take a look.’
Rob and I see a long trail of blood all along the walkway, leading from a room two doors down to the outside staircase. Bonus information: there’s an AXE stuck in that door
We lock up and call front desk, and the guy calmly says, ‘Yeah, we know, we called the cops, they’ll come over when they’re done next door.’
Day two was slightly better. We went to hit up a couple bars. We went back to the motel and things had thankfully been cleaned up. After a couple of hours, around 1 a.m., we start hearing this violin/fiddle playing. It’s not stopping. It’s coming from downstairs, so Rob and I head down. It’s an old man in a wheelchair. Playing the fiddle in front of his motel room. No pants, wearing only a Superman t-shirt that fit more like a crop top.
Bert thinks this is the funniest thing he’s ever heard of and for whatever reason MUST see this for himself. He forces Tony to go with him, and the fiddling suddenly stops. We hear the distinct concerned bellowing from Tony, along with Bert’s signature belly laugh. They come back upstairs and Bert says they convinced him to go back inside his motel room. Tony interjects, ‘Yeah, but not before he pointed his privates at us and made machine noises.’
We think this is the end of it. However, none of us had noticed that his room was directly under ours.
This weird man kept playing all night. In the morning we woke up, and both Bert and Rob were wide awake, having been up all night and that the two of us had to get out until lunch so they could sleep. So the two of us went to breakfast and then bummed around a nearby library for a few hours. We came back and both Rob and Bert are waiting outside with everyone’s bags, saying they checked us out.
I said, okay, did you call around to find another place? He said no, but he wasn’t staying here another night and we’d find another place just bumming around near the bars. I said I was sorry about the snoring and everything. He said that wasn’t it. Apparently, when he woke up, he felt something underneath the fitted sheet under his hand (which was under his pillow as he slept). It was a used pad, surrounded by dead ants.
He had got the motel to refund us the two nights and cancel the booking. We ended up staying in a perfectly nice hotel downtown for about $45 each a night for the rest of the week. It was the worst motel stay of our lives, but it provided hilarious stories for the next 20 years.”
“Luckily They Were Not There”
“I stayed at a hotel in Napa Valley. Not super high end but still $300 a night in a very nice area, so you’d think it would be reasonable.
First time we try to flush the toilet, it’s obvious it’s clogged so we call down to the front desk where the man working the desk informs us maintenance is gone for the day (it’s like 8pm) so we’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning. What? You expect us to not have a toilet all night?
We ask to be moved rooms and are told there are none available in the same layout that night. But after significant resistance and hesitation, he offers to give us the keys to a smaller room down the hall to use their bathroom. I take the keys, let myself into the designated room only to find it’s very much not vacant. Luckily(?) the other guests were not there. But all of their luggage including multiple laptops were sitting out, making it obvious these people were not expecting strangers to be let into their room.
We repeated this process for two more rooms (knocking first) before he finally succeeded in giving us access to a vacant room.
Spend the rest of the trip carrying our valuables with us all day long and being terrified to interact with the front desk guy who glares at us anytime we walk by.”
“The Clerk Is Not Buying It”
“The first one that comes to mind for me is staying at a nicer property about seven miles away from Disneyland in Anaheim.
Did our check-in, our room was plenty nice. We came back after park close to rest our weary bones, and I head to the bathroom to ready for bed. In the bathroom is a large puddle, and lo the ceiling is leaking. So of course I call the front desk, and they try at first to suggest that we can still sleep there. I was firm that no, we are not staying in a room with a leak!
So they move us into a new room, and by this time it’s about 2 a.m. I asked the manager if we could do a later checkout since we will now not be getting much sleep, and they agree. Morning comes, we go to check out and the day people hand me my bill.
It was $150 charge for late check out. I explain we were given permission for the late check out, it should be in the record since we’re checking out from a different room than we checked-in to and that they should call the night people to confirm if there’s a question, but the day clerk is just not buying it.
Ten minutes of going back and forth, essentially threatening me that they would call the cops if I refused to pay the bill, me promising a charge back and a dispute with the credit card, etc. I was polite but firm, and I said frankly I’m not leaving here until you call the night manager. She goes to the office to make the call, and about five minutes later comes back with her tail between her legs and takes the charge off our bill like she’s doing us a favor.
I was beyond mad that I had to battle with them on doing the right thing, and they turned what would have been a forgivable experience into a master class on bad customer service.
I’ve stayed in some dingy rooms over the years, but this was the by far the worst I’ve ever been treated at a hotel.”
“Never Did Get A Wink Of Sleep”
“I was on a trip with an organization I was involved in Baltimore. We were booked at a motel, not a hotel, so the rooms opened up to the street outside. First, we discovered the beds weren’t clean. Questionable crusty spots on the sheets, funky smell, the works. The counselors said to just sleep on top of the comforters.
Next we discovered the infestation, but this wasn’t your average bug problem. No ants, or roaches, or bedbugs (thank goodness), but there was a good reason. The infestation was of more of an insect apex predator.
Praying mantises.
First, we discovered one by the radiator. Then three in the bathroom. Then we looked under the beds and found more. So there we are, four 16 year old girls, freaking out over these big freaking creepy bugs staring at us from all over the room, trying to figure out what on earth to do. We call our counselor’s room, and they say to just try to shoo these beasts out of the room.
Now we have our door wide open, out on some random street in a busy, less than savory part of a semi-notoriously dangerous city, shaking articles of clothing at these evil looking bugs, trying to scare them out (got most of them), when our phone rings.
It’s the counselor telling us to close and lock our door immediately.
It turns out the kids in a room a few doors down from ours had just watched an apparent illegal substance deal right in front of their window, and the one individual was still hanging around. We shut and locked the door, got the last of the bugs (that we could find!) shooed into the bathroom and shut that door, then all huddled on one bed, freaked out.
We ended up peering out around the edges of the curtain, with the lights off, and saw all kinds of interesting things that night. Never did get a wink of sleep, and found two more mantises that managed to crawl out from somewhere in the morning.
The director of the program got a lot of complaints from parents after that trip.”
“Counted Down The Minutes Until We Were Out”
“The first time I went to LA to try to network at E3 (the video game convention), I was trying to find the cheapest hotel relatively close to the convention. Which, was being held downtown in the LA convention center. Now LA is not known for being walk-able, but being an idiot, this was a fact I had no clue about at the time. Luckily, the hotel was ‘affiliated’ with the convention and provided a shuttle.
I was also meeting a friend of mine, and we were going to be staying together in this hotel. So at least I’d have a friend, or rather witness, for our eventual murder.
I fly in and immediately grab a cab. Going on the highway, I think nothing of it until he pulls off and I start looking around. Every business has bullet proof glass between the customers and the tellers including the toy store. There are knockoff fast food places like Kennedy Fried Chicken.
Get to the hotel, it’s a Hilton so it should be ok, and the reception area is a broken mirrored desk with a fish tank behind him with dead fish and algae that’s older than me.
Go up to the room and the carpet is crunchy, wet, and stained by god only knows what.
Our next door neighbors are in the process of hot-boxing the whole floor, and we lay a towel down to try to prevent it from seeping into our room.
The balcony had barbed wire wrapped around it (we were on the fourth floor), and our view was of an ally where a homeless man was sleeping on a couch. Every morning we’d rise to see him defecating in said alley, next to the couch, making eye contact with anyone at the hotel with a window open or the shades not drawn.
That transportation? Yeah, it was just a windowless white van.
After our first night one of the guests, who looked like an uglier version of Harvey Weinstein, brought back a booth girl who I assume was just murdered there because why the heck would she be in a dump like this?
And basically I slept in my shoes and counted down the minutes until we were finally out of there.”
Too Disgusting To Sleep
“On a work trip, I was put in the most disgusting hotel room, to the point where I didn’t feel comfortable and couldn’t sleep. There was a pile of dirt and dust in the corner that I imagine had taken years to accumulate, brown stains on the lampshades, food under the bed, water damage in the pictures in picture frames, the whole room smelt moldy, the hairdryer was sticky, TV remote was stick and covered in food, stuff all over the walls, hair in the shower, the toilet bowl was stained red, everything felt gross and grimy. Not to mention that the hot water didn’t work in my room (only cold showers for me). I felt like a walking zombie that work trip. It felt so disgusting that I really couldn’t sleep.
My coworker in the next room over had a room where the door didn’t fully shut. And he used the latch at the top to close it. The door was still open a couple inches, so he put a chair in front of the door and didn’t sleep at all that trip either.”
“We Didn’t Think Much About It”
“My dad is a cop, so we normally travel with his concealed carry weapon. We went on a trip and he left it at home. We didn’t think much about it but usually it’s a nice peace of mind to know it’s there. We show up to the hotel which was on the beach; great deal, beautiful view, and it’s pretty close to everything. The room itself wasn’t bad, good water pressure, everything seemed amazingly clean. But the door had been kicked in at some point. The deadbolt did absolutely nothing since it was just loose, no door frame surrounding it. We check the room next to us since it was being cleaned we just peaked in, same thing.
It was only for two nights so I didn’t think anything of it. The second night, police knocked on the door because two rooms had been broken into and one person was shot. Six months later, that place closed and then a hurricane basically leveled it. They tore it down and replaced it with an actually nice hotel!”
“My Wife Needs Her Sleep”
“My dad and aunts all looked together for a presidential suite in this fancy hotel for my 13th birthday, because my mom had just passed away and they wanted to do something big. All went well, me and about eight other friends hung out in the pool, sat in the sauna, did facials, and did each other’s hair. We ordered pizza and I opened gifts. Everything was normal. The night started to quiet down, my aunts and dad and cousins all went to sleep. My little brother (about 10 at the time, and also has Aspergers) was still awake but sharing a room with my dad. The suite had five bedrooms. My friends and I were in the biggest room, just laying down on our phones. Then, a knock on the door. No, not a knock. A pound. Vigorously. We didn’t hear it, because our room was on the far end of the suite.
But my little brother did. He answered the door to a six-foot tall, red-faced, very angry middle-aged man who then started screaming at my brother about how loud we had been. He said his wife had stage four cancer and she was trying to get some sleep and that we woke her up. Turns out, we were on the 14th floor, he was on the 11th. But we didn’t know that yet. So my brother starts crying and having a meltdown and my aunt wakes up. She comes to the door and starts objecting the man. He screams even louder, threatening my aunt.
My aunt said ‘This is a child’s birthday party and her mother just died, don’t ruin it.’
To which he replied, ‘Well unlike her, I’m trying to keep my wife alive and she needs her sleep.’
Then the hotel front desk rang our intercom. I answered because our room was the one with the phone. The lady at the desk said that she had received a noise complaint. So immediately I apologized, and my friends and I shut the heck up.
We get another call about 20 minutes later. It’s the hotel manager this time, and he says, ‘I’m so sorry. This man has been creating noise complaints for over a month now to try to get free rooms. He doesn’t really have a wife with fourth stage cancer. He just wants a free room. Happy birthday and have fun.’
Granted, I had no idea what had been going on because like I said we were in our room when this went down, but it happened! Funny story.”
“One Of The Worst Nights”
“It was 2018 in Paris. I had been there spontaneously on my way home from south France to Germany. I needed to stay for a night, since there wasn’t any train going back home for that evening and the night.
Took a room that didn’t seem too bad. Well… In other situations I would have complained, but I was exhausted, fed up and exhausted, even in full despair after a messed up road trip with some of my friends.
However, the TV was within the fixed price and inevitable. But the TV was broke. The window didn’t close (in the middle of Paris on a main road…). The toilet didn’t flush properly. The door lock was broken, so I couldn’t look my door. The shower head was half ripped of and leaked. The shower cabin door had a hole the size of a football and since the bathroom slide door was stuck, I had water everywhere in my room. The bedsheets looked like they haven’t been changed (bloodstains and other unidentifiable stains).
I had to get up at six am to get to my train at 7:30 am, and since I did not have a smartphone with me, I asked the receptionist to give me a call at six in the morning to wake me up as it was important to me. Guess what didn’t happen. If I hadn’t had my wristwatch with me and haven’t been awake most of the night (because of the fear to miss my train), well, I would have missed it. Then I would have been in trouble to the max as I did spend my last money for that train ticket.
On top of that, it was on the night of that blood moon in July 2018 which, I really wanted to see but couldn’t from where I was stuck.
It was one of the worst nights ever for me.”