Worst Hotel you’ve ever stayed at ..

[kwyeewyk]

Ghetto village inn in Penticton BC, drinking age was 19, figured we'd stay the night once rather than run the border crossing like usual after a night of drinking at Slack Alice's and Night Moves. Druggie couple next door, could hear him beating on her, after a while it got bad, we banged on the door and a couple buddies took him for a walk down the ally and showed him the dumpster he was going to end up in if we heard any more of it.

Chinatown motel in Wells, NV, booked online, immediately got a call from the manager trying to get a payment even though we paid through the booking service. Got there, guy was high as a kite, couldn't figure out what room to give us cause the keys were all mixed up. Finally got a key, wife goes in the room and there's an old dude sitting on the bed in his underwear, shocked to see her open his door. Go back to lobby, wife is quite concerned with the same thing happening to us, guy digs around and finds 2 sets of keys and assures us that is all of them for that room so no one will be able to unlock our door. Place is full of 50s-something dudes down on their luck, living there, all hanging out on the balconies talking about the action of the red head going in dude's room, wanting to talk to us about it. Then the owner comes back and tries to get us to pay again, completely forgot that he had just tried his scam on us a few minutes earlier. After observing a few times became apparent the manager was giving keys to his friends for "short term" use of the rooms.

Grossest room was in Moses Lake, don't remember the motel.

 

[fmnjr]

Green Mountain Motel in Jeffrey City, WY.
The dude running the “office” was perpetually drunk and repeated the same line to us each time we bumped into him. The room was disgusting. Camping in the parking lot under a tarp would’ve been a thousand times more sanitary. Never again.

View attachment 310960

That place doesn't even qualify as a sh#thole, let alone somewhere to sleep.

 

[Elky Welky]

El Centro Motel in Glendive MT, circa 2009. At the time it was 25 bucks a night, but they told me if I went to the bars and brought back a girl there would be a $5 cleaning fee added. I was 19 at the time and had already shown the staff my ID.

 

[Redmt]

US Army barracks. People coming through yelling at you all hours of the night.

 

[bigsky2]

The old Sleeping Buffalo Hot Springs hotel at Nelson Reservoir was a little run down. I went there with a group of buddies for an ice fishing trip every winter. It was about $40 a night. We'd always bring sleeping bags to sleep on top of the covers, wasn't uncommon to find a mouse in your room. One dip in the hot springs and your swim suit would be stained red forever. One year we checked in and I told my buddy our room number. He said "I'm pretty sure that's the same room I had last time I was here". We open the room and it's still covered in his Busch Lite cans from a couple weeks prior. "Yep, this was my room."

The rooms were never locked, I'm pretty sure we could have stayed there without anyone even knowing. We didn't have to bring much food as we'd typically drink our dinner at Murph's Landing, the bar that was next door. As shady as it was, it was about as handy of a spot as you could get for ice fishing at Nelson. Lots of good memories at that place.

 

[kansasdad]

International travel can up the ick factor, and then add politics and religion and you can have some real amazing stories.

In February 2002 (Sep 11 2001 attack still vividly fresh, and USA was ramping up in Afghanistan) my little group traveled to the state of Bihar in India. We stayed in the Hotel Harsha in Purnea, (north of Calcutta/Kolcata) which we later learned had previously been the meeting location for the local Al Qaeda guys (eastern Bihar is 50/50 Hindu/Muslim.)

We would leave early in the morning towards a neighboring village where we would hold an all day medical/dental clinic. The group that we were working with had already established primary schools in these villages and would have these all day medical camps trying to help the village improve general health conditions and treat acute and chronic diseases.

Being on the Ganges river plain, but within the Himalayan sphere of weather influence, our stay was cold and very foggy. My hotel room had one small space heater to provide any essence of heat. Before I would go to bed in the evening I'd park my feet in front of the space heater, and hold my hands close to the small tv, as it did produce some heat when I was watching SkyNews.

The bathroom setup was an "eastern toilet" which is basically a porcelain unit set into the floor, with a slot for waste to drop into while one squatted. When flushed, the waste was sent out of the slot and into a down-gutter, to the open sewer channel that ran through the garden where it merged with the street gutter/open sewer.



On several occasions upon returning to the hotel in the evening, we were met in the lobby and told "it would be best that you take your meal in your rooms tonight". It might have been a wedding party using the restaurant, or perhaps either the Al Qaeda affiliated groups (Muslim) or RSS (radical Hindu militant group that has been known to target non Hindu aid workers/missionaries) that the management wanted to keep us separate. I was quite happy to oblige.

On several mornings we would come downstairs to find the smallish lobby full of armed men. A few wore uniforms, but mostly plain clothed men who had some serious polish on their disdainful scowls thrown our way. Getting into the Tata SUV to head off for the day's clinic, I kept an eye out to determine if we were being followed or not.

The worst night in the Harsha hotel happened near the end of our stay. A man started yelling in the hallway outside my door. My Hindi sucks, but I do recognize "americani" and heard the angry tone in his voice. I believe that he was trying to drum up a mob to deal with us. Stories of angry mobs storming into churches to beat the visitors with iron bars, and then hauling them off to jail on trumped up charges are numerous, and ran through my head.

I moved the second bed behind the door, stacked other furniture on the bed to make it as heavy as I could, and prepared a backpack with a change of clothes, some food/water and surveyed which window I might have the easiest time exiting the room if it came to that.

He went downstairs into the lobby, still yelling at the top of his voice. As it wasn't yet 10pm the hotel's security fence was not yet locked in front of the entrance, he went outside to stir things up. My heart rate was going at least double my resting rate, and I tried to decide if I should try to get to the ladies rooms just down the hallway or stay put.

A "still small voice" thought came into my head......"he has an assignment to harass you until midnight, all you need to do is pray". So that is what I did. This guy kept yelling for over two hours. On our second floor, up onto the third floor, and down in the lobby and kitchen area after the security gates were closed. It seemed like sometimes someone was trying to calm him down, but he was going all out in volume and rage. I just sat on my bed, and asked and thanked for safety for our group, and asked for divine safety. At the stroke of midnight, he went quiet. A door opened and shut just down the hallway, and all was quiet.

My heart rate remained over 140 most of the night from the adrenaline rush. Sleep was fitful at best. Getting out of bed to get ready for breakfast and our team meeting, I carefully opened the door and went over to Jeanette's room. As the others were there already, I asked how everyone slept last night. They all agreed that they had had a lovely nights rest, as the cold temperatures had relented just a bit, and perhaps we were all acclimatizing to the chill.

I asked "what did you think about the angry dude in the hallways?"

They stared at me as if I was making up a story. "What angry guy yelling outside our doors?" they asked.

And I told them of my night: barricading my door and praying....to keep us safe and evidently divinely protecting their ears from hearing all of the commotion in the hotel last night.

 

[Gr8bawana]

Years ago when our kids were little my wife and I left them with my mom and decided to go to Disneyland on the spur of the moment. We spent the night at a little motel near the park called the Captains Quarters motel.
There were roaches in the tub, the door barely latched to stay closed. My wife insisted I wedge a chair under the doorknob. There were still cig buts in the ashtrays and if you walked near the pool there was so much chlorine it made your nose sting.

 

[jwatts]

I’m a bit of a cheapskate, but my wife and I agreed that we are at a point in our lives that we can afford nice hotel rooms.

But what about when you want that hot wing special at the Pizza Hut in Dillon, MT but also want to be able to walk there from your hotel? That one was shady. Not the worst, but on up there.

 

[rtraverdavis]

My brother found a single slice of American cheese tucked into the bedsheets in our motel room in Huntington, UT, when we were kid's tagging along on Dad's cow elk hunt. So that was interesting.

 

[perma]

I work in Grand Rapids, Mi and live an hour north. From your description that could be 80 - 90% of the motels in GR

You said it, but I sure as hell was thinking it....

 

[TheTone]

Downtown boise where although the hotel wasn’t that bad there seemed to be lots of extra curricular activities going on in a next door room. The lights there essentially on the exact opposite schedule as us, doors constantly opening and closing throughout the night, lots of noise and add to it doors that were really poor fitting with a 4-6 inch gap at the bottom of the door

 

[jwatts]

It's pretty reasonable to expect for us to end up at a shady hotel once per trip. I think the worst was on the return trip from an antelope hunt in Gillette back in 2018. We stayed in Gillette for the hunt. A winter storm was rolling in, so we decided to be satisfied with filling our buck tags, and to ditch the doe tags and head home early. We hit the road and decided to get as far away from the chances of getting caught in the storm as we could. We ended up close to Kansas City, and decided that as soon as we cleared town we'd get a room so that we wouldn't have any traffic to deal with the next morning.

I didn't know anything about Kansas City at the time. My buddy was driving, so I pulled up hotels.com, found a room just past what I assumed would be the major traffic areas, and booked it. We rolled up to a full parking lot out front, very dimly lit, unmaintained, and empty lot out back. We parked under the awning by the main entrance and went inside. The abundance of bullet proof glass should have been a dead giveaway. We got our keys and went to the room to unpack before moving the truck. We got to the room to find several freshly patched holes in the wall, all conveniently about the size of a bullet hole. There were some pretty questionable stains on the floor. All the while a multitude of sirens were going off all up and down the street. We went back to the truck and unpacked everything we owned. Rather than move to the back lot, we just left the truck parked in front of the front desk. If it got jacked, at least someone would be there to give us a heads up. We slept with pistols on the night stand and rifles out of their cases. Sleep happened on top of the covers and I am not even sure we used the shower. We made it through the night and got as far away from there as we could, as fast as we could do it.

We had a similar quality stay in Wichata Falls, TX in 2022, minus the bullet holes and chances of being murdered in our sleep. The room was maybe a little worse. I was scared to even use the bathroom. The shower was dirty and wouldn't drain. The bathroom hadn't been cleaned in a while. Another night of sleeping on top of the covers. But, they did have coffee and a continental breakfast.

Edit: Looks like they've turned that place in Kansas City into a housing place for the homeless now. I guess they were there anyway, may as well let em in.

https://flatlandkc.org/news-issues/houseless-hotel-a-housing-first-solution-for-those-without-homes/

 

[rmyoung1]

That place doesn't even qualify as a sh#thole, let alone somewhere to sleep.

The non-potable water was a bonus. At least we were warned beforehand.

 

[JEL]

Just reading these posts makes my skin crawl.

 

[Letthemgrow]

I stayed at a Hampton Inn one time that had the audacity to server Folgers coffee in the morning.
Yeesh.

 

[Southern Elk]

But what about when you want that hot wing special at the Pizza Hut in Dillon, MT but also want to be able to walk there from your hotel? That one was shady. Not the worst, but on up there.

That one is sketchy for sure. Not as bad as some of the others mentioned here, but it’s one that I would never go back to. Was that the Super 8?

 

[perma]

I stayed at a Hampton Inn one time that had the audacity to server Folgers coffee in the morning.
Yeesh.

Sorry you had to go through that. Prayers up.

 

[MTGomer]

Days inn, Brawley, CA

 

[Outlaw99]

Seems like this was a super 8 in Billings sometime around 2016 or so. This is what we found when we walked into the room…. I slept in my sleeping bag on top of the bed while laying on my mini my pillow…total shit hole

 

[Southern Elk]

It's pretty reasonable to expect for us to end up at a shady hotel once per trip. I think the worst was on the return trip from an antelope hunt in Gillette back in 2018. We stayed in Gillette for the hunt. A winter storm was rolling in, so we decided to be satisfied with filling our buck tags, and to ditch the doe tags and head home early. We hit the road and decided to get as far away from the chances of getting caught in the storm as we could. We ended up close to Kansas City, and decided that as soon as we cleared town we'd get a room so that we wouldn't have any traffic to deal with the next morning.

I didn't know anything about Kansas City at the time. My buddy was driving, so I pulled up hotels.com, found a room just past what I assumed would be the major traffic areas, and booked it. We rolled up to a full parking lot out front, very dimly lit, unmaintained, and empty lot out back. We parked under the awning by the main entrance and went inside. The abundance of bullet proof glass should have been a dead giveaway. We got our keys and went to the room to unpack before moving the truck. We got to the room to find several freshly patched holes in the wall, all conveniently about the size of a bullet hole. There were some pretty questionable stains on the floor. All the while a multitude of sirens were going off all up and down the street. We went back to the truck and unpacked everything we owned. Rather than move to the back lot, we just left the truck parked in front of the front desk. If it got jacked, at least someone would be there to give us a heads up. We slept with pistols on the night stand and rifles out of their cases. Sleep happened on top of the covers and I am not even sure we used the shower. We made it through the night and got as far away from there as we could, as fast as we could do it.

We had a similar quality stay in Wichata Falls, TX in 2022, minus the bullet holes and chances of being murdered in our sleep. The room was maybe a little worse. I was scared to even use the bathroom. The shower was dirty and wouldn't drain. The bathroom hadn't been cleaned in a while. Another night of sleeping on top of the covers. But, they did have coffee and a continental breakfast.

Edit: Looks like they've turned that place in Kansas City into a housing place for the homeless now. I guess they were there anyway, may as well let em in.

https://flatlandkc.org/news-issues/houseless-hotel-a-housing-first-solution-for-those-without-homes/

I’m glad I live across the country now and meet y’all at the hunting destinations. You should have just slept in the truck.