HotelChatter

Tags: Hotel Hell / London Hotels / UK Hotels / Dirty Hotels / → All Tags

The Cromwell Crown is Officially The Worst Hotel in Britain

Where: 139-141 Cromwell Road, London, United Kingdom, SW7 4DX

So this is what they mean by "dirt cheap." We already knew that the Hotel Carter is the pad to stay away from in America. Now meet its UK equivalent – London’s Cromwell Crown Hotel, named today by Tripadvisor as the worst hotel in Britain.

It may be in a fairly a swanky part of town, but the hotel’s anything but Tripadvisor reviewers noted “bloodstained” bedding, cans of beer in the bath, rat droppings on the pillows and “slightly mental-looking people wandering up and down the corridors.” Well, if you will only pay £19 ($27) for your room…

According to Tripadvisor, seven of Britain’s ten filthiest hotels are in the capital. If you’d rather not run the e-coli gauntlet, The 41 Hotel, the monochrome gaff by Buckingham Palace, was named the country’s best luxury hotel.

[Photo: RocaRoskilde]

Tags: UK Hotels / Hotel Woes / British Hotels / Dirty Hotels / → All Tags

British Hotels Need To Shape Up

This hotel room ain't going to cut it anymore.

If ever there’s been a week to put your transatlantic ticket on hold, it’s this one. First came the news last week that the UK's budget hotels were "unfit to lick". Today the chairman of the UK tourist board, no less, made us think we should start stockpiling the supplies for our next venture into an English hotel.

“Threadbare towels, a previously owned bar of soap and a grumpy person who says: ‘We don’t do breakfast before 8am and we don’t do it after 8.12am,’” are all things you could come across should you be unfortunate enough to stay in the UK, according to VisitBritain Chairman Christopher Rodrigues. He reckons that if they don’t shape up, the industry will lose up to 50,000 jobs in the coming recession.

A good hotel doesn’t have to be five star, says Rodrigues, all you need is “a clean bar of soap and fluffy towels." An attainable goal, granted, but we’re thinking that might not quite be enough to reel in the visitors over the pond. Unless, the room is a pound a night.

In April, VisitBritain will launch a £6.5m campaign to tout the UK as a "value for money" destination. If hotels don't clean up their act by then, the campaign may have to feature Basil Fawlty as their poster boy.

[Photo: dogfael]

Have you ever stayed in a budget British hotel that was actually clean? Let us know where.

Tags: Dirty Hotels / Travelodge Hotels / Ibis Hotels / London Hotels / Hotel News / → All Tags

UK Budget Hotels Found Unfit to Lick

A room at the Ibis Eustson in London.

Here's an early-morning story out of the UK that will give you the heebie jeebies: Holiday magazine sent microbiological technical consultants into sixteen budget hotel rooms around the UK and found some pretty skanky stuff in a few Ibis and Travelodge properties.

In this iteration of the classic evening-news-coming-into-a-hotel-with-a-blacklight operation, the budget rooms were thoroughly inspected and, well, let's just say that the Extended Stay Lick-Everything Chick would not fare well in these rooms.

From a recap of the investigation by BBC News:

Mould was found growing on a mattress at an Ibis hotel on Manchester's Charles Street, while a duvet at the Portland Street Ibis, also in Manchester, had a stain suspected to be blood.

A toilet at Ibis Euston in London was found to have urine and faeces around its seat and urine down its pedestal, the report said.

As for the Travelodge properties with cleanliness issues, high levels of bacteria and dust were found at three Travelodge hotels in London and two in Manchester.

Fortunately, experts have determined that none of the hygiene issues really pose a threat to the health of the guests using those rooms. Unless you lick everything in the hotel room.

[Photo: dogfael]

Tags: Dirty Hotels / Airport Hotels / UK Hotels / Hotel Hell / Monica Guy / → All Tags

Dirty Hotels in Dirty Places: Europa Gatwick

TripAdvisor has just published a hot-list of the top 10 Dirtiest Hotels in the US and UK.

The one that touched our hearts is the Europa Gatwick in Crawley, near Gatwick Airport in the UK, because we had the misfortune to grow up there.

The Europa is currently only 4th on the list, but we reckon the fact of being located in one of the most revolting towns in the UK would bump it right up to the top.

more ›