#TravelTips #HotelRedFlags #TravelSafety
🚨 People who travel, what is an immediate red flag in hotels? 🚨
When you’re traveling, your hotel should be a safe and comfortable place to rest your head. However, not all hotels are created equal. There are definitely red flags to watch out for when you’re checking into a hotel. Here are some immediate red flags to look out for when you’re staying at a hotel:
## 1. Uncleanliness
When you first enter your hotel room, take note of the cleanliness. Some red flags include:
– Dirty linens and towels
– Unclean bathroom
– Dust and dirt in the room
– Unpleasant odors
If your room is not clean, it may be a sign that the hotel does not prioritize cleanliness, which could be a reflection of the overall maintenance and management of the property.
## 2. Safety and Security Concerns
Feeling safe in your hotel is paramount. Look out for:
– Faulty locks on doors and windows
– Poorly lit hallways and parking areas
– Inadequate security measures
If you are feeling unsafe in your hotel, it’s important to address these concerns with hotel staff, or seek alternative accommodation.
## 3. Maintenance and Upkeep
A well-maintained hotel is crucial for a comfortable stay. Red flags to watch out for include:
– Broken or malfunctioning amenities (e.g. lights, TV, air conditioning)
– Cracked or stained furniture
– Signs of water damage or mold
If a hotel does not invest in the upkeep of its property, it could lead to a less-than-pleasant stay for guests.
## 4. Poor Customer Service
Good customer service can make or break a hotel experience. Look out for:
– Unhelpful or unfriendly staff
– Long wait times for check-in or other services
– Inattentive or unresponsive staff
If you encounter poor customer service, it can impact your overall experience at the hotel. It’s important to voice your concerns and seek resolution.
## 5. Lack of Amenities Advertised
If your hotel does not deliver on the amenities it promised, it can be a major red flag. For example:
– Non-functional gym or pool facilities
– Closed or understocked restaurants or bars
– Inaccurate descriptions of in-room amenities
When a hotel fails to provide the amenities it advertised, it can lead to disappointment and dissatisfaction with your stay.
In conclusion, when you’re staying at a hotel, it’s important to keep an eye out for these red flags. By being aware of potential issues, you can make informed decisions about where to stay and ensure a safe, comfortable, and enjoyable travel experience. Remember, your hotel should be a home away from home, and it’s worth taking the time to ensure that it meets your expectations for a pleasant stay. Safe travels!
Little hectoring laminated notices
I used to travel internationally A LOT for work, so I have quite a few hotel horror stories.
Anyway, the most immediate red flag was when I checked in and asked what time breakfast was served:
“Breakfast starts at 9am”
“9am? That’s pretty late. I have meetings in town before then.”
“Oh, do you want it now?”
It was around 8pm at the time. It didn’t get any better from there. There were hookers in the lobby and the bed smelled so bad that I slept on a hard wooden chair.
The guy at reception drinking a pint at 10 am. Redcar, uk
Door that won’t lock properly.
A fat Venezuelan guy in the lobby with a hot lady on each arm and every bed has plastic sheets.
When you walk into the reception for the first time and a man is shouting “THIS IS THE WORST FUCKING HOTEL I’VE EVER STAYED IN!” before storming out.
The smell of poor ventilation, the moment you enter the hotel.
The surroundings. I always do my research with hotels and I actively avoid “4.5/5 stars,” but in the middle of a shady street or a dimly-lit alley.
I found something like that when I was choosing hotels in Rome and it ticked all the boxes until I checked the actual location on Google maps. I did more research and found that that particular location is a known “meth” street.
Bullet proof glass around reception office.
Mold and mildew smell.
Mattresses piled up by the dumpsters/trash (red flag for the possibility of bed bugs).
If there is nobody at reception, particularly if it’s advertised as a 24 hour service, that’s always a bad sign. It suggests that the receptionist is either super busy doing the work of 3 people and the place is understaffed or a lack of discipline in the staff. Understaffed means extra wait times for everything and a lack of discipline means that nobody gives a flying fuck so everything from breakfast to bar service will be a major challenge.
“You’re on the top bunk.”
This only applies to larger hotels:
When all employees are really young. Not a single employee over the age of 20-23 in view.
This in my experience means that who ever is managing the hotel is only hiring the cheapest possible employees, that generally don’t know their rights. In every occasion like this, service has been completely absent.
No mattress protector. Any hotel worth its salt, no matter how cheap, should have a mattress protector for bugs and liquids.
Many of them advertise it even. But when you show up, nada. I travel for work frequently and I won’t sleep on a bed that has no mattress protector.
I once had brown water coming out of the faucet at a hotel in Romania when I wanted to freshen up after checking in. It didn’t get any better from there.
Bloodstains on the wall. They tried to get rid of bed bugs, failed, so previous guests were smashing them by hand. They did not bother clean the wall.
Little dark-brown spots near the top of the bed, below the mattress on in mattress seams. These mean bedbugs.
When the night receptionist gives you a room that’s already occupied.
Have traveled in China quite a bit for work. There were red flags *everywhere*…
Did a job up in Blythe (UK) a while ago. We asked the customer where to stay and their nearest recommendation was about 20 miles away. We said “really?” and they said “yes, really.”
A guy from another company also working on the project stayed in a hotel in Newcastle. He collected his key and went to his room to find the door had been kicked off the hinges. He called reception and told them this. They misheard (to be fair he was from somewhere near Fort William) and said, “Oh, can’t you make the key work?” “No, the door is lying in the middle of the room and the hinges have been torn off the wall.” “Oh, no worries, come back down and we’ll give you another room.” Like this was perfectly normal.
The cockroach smell – its a musty, powdery smell
Read the google reviews before you book and see if the owners/managers respond kindly (if at all). If they attack the negative reviewers at all – stay away
In thousands of hotel nights I only once checked into a hotel where I was asked at the front desk to leave a cash deposit to be issued a TV remote control. I figured that was not a good sign and it turned out I was right.
When you lay down in bed after a long day and fall asleep and then the next guest keys into your room. Has happened to me twice so I stopped staying at Hampton Inns.
I stayed at a hostel once in London where I was in the “middle bunk.” I learned that middle bunks exist that day.
Overly aggressive air fresheners. If you get to the hotel and the room has a strong air freshener smell they are trying to mask bad smells like mold, sewage, or worse.
Before booking, look at the location on Google Maps. Hotels have a photography team give you the nicest look at the hotel possible, but if you want the real info just check it on streetview.
Check reviews, look at critical ones, see if there’s any trend. You can’t please everyone of course, but enough people making a stink about a common problem is good enough for you to look elsewhere.
Additional fees that aren’t included in the estimate. This is new to me, but had I known I’d need to pay an “urban fee” in my last trip to Chicago, I may have looked elsewhere for lodging.
Once I get to my room, give it a once-over for bugs, especially bed bugs. Leave if there are bed bugs, roaches, tons of fruit or drain flies, ants. I even complained about some kind of weird bugs crawling around in a shower drain in my last hotel trip and received a room upgrade, thankfully without those bugs.
This is true for restaurants as well, actually: check behind the toilet to see how well they clean there. It’s a really great indicator for how they handle the cleanliness of other not-so-immediately-visible surfaces. If it’s grungy, probably a lot of other things are neglected, too.
An easy red flag is when you’re looking a place over online and there are absolutely no photos of the exterior or street / neighborhood, just generic-looking photos of beds and the breakfast room.
Your Uber driver asking “you sure?” as you pull ip to the hotel.
I don’t know if this counts, but we went back home to visit family for the holidays. We decided to get a hotel so we can have a reprieve from the chaos, so we booked this okay hotel (we knew it wasn’t fancy).
We were kinda surprised at how shitty it was. The pictures made it look okay–classic 2.5 star hotel vibes–but coming in… The breakfast bar online was a hot bar with nice food. In reality, it was a couple vending kinda things with cereal in it, and Styrofoam cups for coffee and OJ.
The person that checked us in said “sorry, our cleaning staff called in.” Now, that was weird. *All* of them?
We go to our room, and it looks like all the furniture was grabbed off the side of the street. It was rough.
It was like 1am and we were exhausted after a 10 hour drive. We just kinda shrugged, not that big of a deal.
We did our quick check for bed bug shit, and didn’t see anything. Bed wasn’t the worse we’ve had by far. The most miserable piece of shit bed I ever had was at a 4-star hotel in downtown Chicago. Anyway, I hobbled into the bathroom to shower, and see pink mold all over, and water damage all over the ceiling. Gross.
The next morning, we’re getting ready, and walk down the hall to go about our day, and the owner and his family are putting cardboard over a window. In the middle of the night, someone broke in through the window in one of the vacant rooms to try to steal the TV, which is presumably bolted to the wall. They failed their task, apparently.
Without much debate, we decided to skip the free breakfast.
We pile in the car to go see family and I see I have a text from my mother in law.
My mother in law texts us and says to get out of the hotel. We’re like, “why?” (We can guess why).
She said there’s a couple people she knows that found roaches and ended up with bed bugs from staying there. It’s a known drug hub. They have no staff, she said, and they haven’t for a while. *Huh.* I thought, *I guess they didn’t “call in”.*
Shit. Alright.
We decided to pack up our shit and drive 40 min down the highway to the next town to stay at a much nicer hotel. It was miles better, but we didn’t get a refund on our original hotel unfortunately. In an effort to save money, we ended up paying for **two** hotels.
TLDR: when in doubt, get the more expensive option. Don’t go cheap, especially in a tiny town. Buy cheap, buy twice, as they always say.
I worked at Booking (dot com) about a decade++ ago and our data scientists always said: “Avoid hotels with a rating lower than 8.3”.
It was some kind of conclusive point of no return or something. They knew something that they couldn’t share, but I’ve always applied this rule since that day, and I’ve never been disappointed. And I’ve traveled a LOOOOOT.
Red flag: rating lower than 8.3 on Booking.