Hotel Madness: Gadling’s tournament of hotel pet peeves

by Mike Barish on
Like many of you, we’re very excited about the NCAA basketball tournament. We’ll be filling out brackets and putting off work to watch the games. However, that doesn’t mean that we stop thinking about travel. In honor of March Madness, we’ve put together our own tournament of hotel pet peeves. Welcome to Hotel Madness, the ultimate bracket of things that drive us insane at hotels. You’ll be choosing the winners of each match-up by voting in polls, meaning that you’ll decide the ultimate Hotel Madness champion.

What do we hope to accomplish over the course of the next three weeks? Most likely hotels aren’t going to change their abhorrent behavior, but we’ll have plenty of fun blowing off steam and mocking the most annoying aspects of staying at a hotel.

All this week we’ll be running the first round match-ups and asking you to place your votes for hotel pet peeves that bother you the most. From the lack of free wifi to filthy television remotes, all of your least favorite things at hotels are represented in the tournament. Only one can be champion and you’ll decide the winner.

Below is a key so you can decipher all of those icons. First round match-ups will begin today and we’ll have descriptions of each pet peeve. All of our first round match-ups are now live and listed below. Be sure to vote and tell all of your friends. Welcome to Hotel Madness, the tournament of hotel horribleness!


First round voting ends at 11:59EDT on Sunday, March 20.

Follow along with the Hotel Madness tournament here.

No Europe trip this summer? Check out today’s Euro 2008 final.

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Between several other vacations, high summer airline prices and the ridiculous Euro/Dollar exchange rate, I am sadly not heading to Europe this summer. But even though I haven’t been able to make it “across the pond,” I have been vicariously soaking up some European culture through this year’s Euro 2008 soccer championships. Today marks the final between Spain and Germany of what has been another tournament of surprising upsets and nail-biting finishes.

Pish-posh, what’s this about “soccer” you say? Actually, I don’t know a whole lot about European soccer either. Yes, I know a few of the popular club teams like FC Barcelona and Manchester United, but I’m fairly clueless about the day-to-day standings and players. Why then, should anyone bother watching? Because European soccer is more than just a simple sporting event – it’s a defining aspect of European cultural identity. Ask your typical European citizen to tell you about their favorite team or best soccer experience and you’re bound to get an enthusiastic answer.

So if you’re near a television today, crack open a nice cold Hefeweizen and switch over to ABC around 2:30 EST for the big event. Next summer when you’re in Munich you’ll be swapping Euro 2008 stories with the locals in no time.