A few years ago I stayed in a place in Liverpool. Was being a bit cheap as we were going just to sleep in and not really use the hotel so just found a place that was affordable. When we got off the train and a taxi to the place, the driver started laughing then pulled up outside here
the receptionist worked out of a bedroom and I think this was the actual room we were in. The table had a bowl with prawn cocktal crisps in and the toilet had an Elvis themed slot machine just next to the sink
Salford ibis budget. Absolutely horrific place
This place in Porto, looks like it has been done up now and it was fine but the room absolutely reeked of smoke.
Hotel California.
Efficient checkin / checkout procedure, but impossible to find the entrance / exit.
The Holiday Inn Express, Stevenage. I picked it because their website said they both wi-fi and the sort of Internet (which I needed for work) where you just plug a cable into your laptop. Neither was working when I got there, I asked if it would be fixed they shrugged and suggested I go to the library instead. Also the bed was tiny, the shower was cold and for some reason someone went round slamming every single door in the place between 5:30am and 7:30am.
Lasted one night and went to the Ibis instead, which wasn’t great either. Think the combined cost of both hotels was still significantly under my nightly expense allowance though.
Wasn’t the worst by any means but stayed in a hotel in Düsseldorf where for some reason every room had a different theme.
So there was like the Batman room, Harry Potter room, James Bond room, Disney room or whatever. Don’t actually know what they had really as you could obviously not see into anyone’s room other than your own, and you didn’t get to choose.
We got the Lady Gaga room.
No idea which hotel it was, now, but the first place I stayed when I went to Morocco 21 years ago was particularly grim - badly lit, smelly, cockroaches etc. It set expectations low at least, as everywhere else seemed much better by comparison.
I stayed at what I think was a Best Western near Piccadilly in the early 00s in the days before Trip Advisor etc. Think we’d been to see Belle and Sebastian at the Astoria but I might be wrong. Can’t remember much other than
On the plus side, it couldn’t have been more than about £45 for a bed in central London.
Haha I did look at the pictures and all the other rooms seem to be hostel like but our room did have a mirror on the ceiling
Stayed a few very questionable hotels in Asia. Some memorable stays included one with full-glass internal windows (unfrosted) for the en-suite and another with 80s erotica posters pinned on the walls.
The worst though was probably a stay in Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong, which is basically a huge tower block with small hotels inside. It’s a complete maze with each floor different in layout to the floor above and weird alcoves which give bedrooms a window only to another concrete wall 1ft away. There’s also constant drilling/construction noise which reverberates through the (tiny) rooms.
Anyway the stay there wasn’t great but it was made so much worse a few weeks later when we were watching an episode of Banged Up Abroad and Chungking Mansions featured prominently in one episode. They took great pleasure in explaining how it’s a hotbed of organised crime with people preying on impoverished foreign travellers getting them roped into drug smuggling operations. 
Somewhere in the arse end of nowhere in Texas - it was a motel where people were living there. Everything smelled of smoke and all the furniture was stained. I’m convinced there were ghosts. I barely slept.
I went for a work trip to Cologne a few years back and was put up in a nice, upper mid chain hotel while I was there. I decided to spend an extra night in the city to do a bit of sightseeing but didn’t want to spend that much money, so checked in to a different place on the north side of the river called something like Hotel Stork.
The guy on the desk was this incredibly creepy dude who gave out some very weird vibes, the place looked a bit run-down and haunted, like a sex hotel that was only used for sad affairs and hadn’t hosted anything joyful in 3-4 decades. My room was this small space with sharp angled corners so that nothing fit right and a massive, draughty window I couldn’t close. I had to pretty much stand on the toilet to close the bathroom door and the shower only ran at scalding temperatures.
Strange thing is, I had one of the best nights sleeps I’d had in ages in that room…
The Britannia Hotel in Manchester. I’ve stayed in a lot of cheap, shitty hotels, but the experience at the Britannia takes the cake. Looks really nice from the outside and even on entry, huge lobby area with what would have at one point been opulent fittings, but there was mould, dirt, nothing really worked including basics like one of the bedside lamps, the staff were totally unhelpful, and when we unlocked our room there was a man who was either very, very high or having a breakdown hiding behind the bed.
Exquisitely bad in there. Think they’ve even won ‘awards’ for how terrible it is.
Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool.
Happily I can say I didn’t book it as it was a work thing, but it did feel like quite a special experience and one I wouldn’t necessarily believe if I hadn’t had it!
Easyjet hotel, Earls Court
Have only ever seen that place from the train but it has an awful vibe.
Hotel Rembrandt Square. Breakfast was served in Coffeeshop Smokey.
This place in Ramsbottom, there were a fair few of us there and we all seemed to have issues with our rooms. Think I was above the sauna and the room was baking hot, also next to the supplies cupboard in the hall where there’d be really loud conversations by the staff in the morning so sleep was impossible.
The drinks were dodgy and made one person ill on the first night, and by the time we left all the taps were off.
Ramsbottom itself was really nice though for food and drink.
