Re: Hotels From Hell

[Nettie]

#17416

Well Caroline you have certainly had some interesting events happen to you.

This topic I've had some experience with.

Having moved around Australia for the last twenty years (my husband gets transfered in his job quite often), we have stayed in our fair share of bad hotels, while traveling between posting locations and then when we get to our locality, we have to stay in hotels until we can find a house to live.

This in itself gets quite stressful without adding grotty hotels into the formula.
I remember the very first move I had just got married and left my home state of Tassie to a new life in NSW. I was moving to a state where I knew no one and to a place where I had never been.
We arrived into Newcastle in the early evening went to our hotel only to find they had g iven our room out. But being generous they had booked us into another hotel 40 mins back the way we had come. (not knowing there was an other hotel just minutes up the road in the other direction. we headed back the way we came Not the same chain though.)
That in itself doesn't seem to bad but Bob had to go to work the next day and I had to vacate the room by early morning. I had no where to go, to early to get to our original hotel so I had to go with Bob to work and sit in the car in the carpark, while he went to work. Luckily it was only until lunch time then he was able to take me to the origanal hotel. Why you may ask did we go back to the original hotel after what they did? Because we had no say in it .Bob's work had booked all the accommodation so thats where we had to stay until we were able to find a house. (which luckily was only a few weeks)

Another bad experince was on a move from Katherine in the Northern Territory to Queensland I remember this one well because it was my birthday the same thing happened again the hotel had given our room out etc but this time we had made a point of ringing and confirming ahead of time. not that that seem to matter.The hotel they had booked us into was so bad they only had curtains on the top half of the windows the bottom half were painted (I think they had run out of material ) The beds were the pits they were skinny little single beds with wire on the bases like old dorm beds and bugs there were som many they could have carried you away.
There was no breakfast menu so no special breaky for my birthday just a rush to get out of there and onto the next town.

I think we have had a minor incedent in nearly every move.Our last move to here we had all settled in for the night the kids were in bed and we were just getting ready for bed when the fire alarm went off.
It's amazing what kids sleep through we had to really shake them to get them up while quickly getting something decent on and getting out of the room in an orderly fashion. So we and many others take the stairs to get outside luckily we were only 5 floors up. We all waited outside on the esplanade in pjs while the fireman put the fire out. Something minor somebody was cooking something in their room and it burnt causing lots of smoke.

On the upside we have stayed in lots of wonderful hotel with fantastic service. But staying in so many over the years it has taked the excitement out of staying in hotels when we go on holidays.