UPDATE: An inside look at “America’s Dirtiest Hotel”

by Mike Barish on

A couple of weeks ago I told you about The Dirtiest Hotels in the United States. New York City’s Hotel Carter was ranked number one and the user reviews on TripAdvisor are pretty graphic. The reader comments on my post contained some fantastic stories of other horrendous hotels. However, many readers used the comments to ask Gadling to send me to the Hotel Carter for a first-hand review. Some of you even went so far as to email our editors requesting that I be sent inside the infamous hotel to see if it lived up (or down) to the hype.

Well, we heard you loud and clear. Last night, Room 812 at the Hotel Carter belonged to me. Was it a bug-infested petri dish of awfulness? Was there a dead hooker in the bathtub? Was the dead hooker hot? Stay tuned. I’ll have my full report up later this week.

Travelers’ Choice Awards 2009: The best of the best

by Jamie Rhein on

Trip Advisor has just released its Travelers’ Choice Awards. The several pages missive provides a hefty selection of the best hotels in various categories. This is the opposite end of the spectrum of the worst hotels. It’s not uncommon that the best can be had for less money than a dump.

Sea Coast Inn in Hyannis, Massachusetts has held onto its first place spot as the Best Bargain from last year. Interestingly, it has kept its spot as “Best Hidden Gem” as well.

Of the other top10 bargains in the U.S., five of them are in California, two are in Florida, and Colorado and Utah have one each. When it comes to overseas bargain shopping, several countries have options. Italy does have two slots in the top 10.

Organized by categories, the Travelers’ Choice Awards are a great place to start when planning a trip whether you’re looking for luxury, romance, a bargain or a family destination.

Keeping with this month’s theme of bargain destinations, here are the number one places to stay in each of the bargain categories. Browse through each list, however, because one hotel further down might catch your eye–or a destination might beckon. Egypt has several listings for top places for families in Africa, for example. That has me thinking.

Best Bargains

Click here for the pdf file for the whole list. The photo is of Hotel Vecchio Asilo.

Dirtiest Hotels in the United States

by Mike Barish on

Hotels are filthy places. As fellow Gadling blogger Scott recently told us, hotel rooms aren’t always cleaned as well as we would like. Imagine how many people have touched that television remote before you arrived. Or, for your sanity’s sake, don’t. And for the love of all that you consider holy, do not run a blacklight over your sheets and bedspread. But some hotels are filthier than others. And the folks at TripAdvisor have used reader reviews to compile their annual list of Dirtiest Hotels in the United States.

New York City (where I live) is home to two of the “top” three dirtiest hotels. Coming in at number one is the Hotel Carter and at number three is the New York Inn. The reader reviews for the Hotel Carter don’t pull any punches.

Roaches, rats, mice, horrible smells, dirty sheets, horrifying bathrooms, outlets that hang out of walls…

This hotel was the filthiest,most unsanitary place I have seen ever. From the smell when you walk into the room to the plastic wrapped around the mattresses.

There are bed bugs in this hotel and you don´t easily see these bugs, but after one night you see the bites and they itch terribly for many days!

Welcome To Hell.

It could be worse than bed bugs, though. You could find a corpse under your bed, which a housekeeper at the Hotel Carter did in 2007. The upside to this story? It proves that they have housekeepers!

Strange Hotels from Around the World


Mischarged? Stand your ground!

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Mistakes happen, and we’ve all been on both sides of errors. So, if you find that a hotel has overcharged you – or charged you for services you didn’t consume – keep a cool head. If you remain pleasant and reasonable, the situation can generally be fixed pretty quickly. On rare occasions, however, you’ll meet with a bit of resistance.

As Christopher Elliott wrote on CNN.com, the hotels have a lot at stake in not reversing the charges associated with in-room entertainment. Since it splits the revenue with a third party (such as LodgeNet), the hotel is on the hook for up to half the fee, even if the charge was erroneous. In the case that Elliott presents, the front desk staff offered to cut the charge in half.

Do not let a hotel push this alternative on you.

A charge that is not yours is a charge you should not pay. Stand your ground. Ask to speak to increasingly higher ranking personnel at the hotel. Eventually, it is more expensive for them to talk to you than it is to swallow the charge. If you have to dash out to the airport, register your objection in writing.

If you still have not been able to settle the problem, take your complaint public. Visit the many travel review sites (such as Trip Advisor) and explain your situation. Many hotels do read these reviews and reply to customer complaints there. Take action, and they will have to, as well.

[Via CNN]

Trip Advisor donating $1,000,000 to charity. You help them decide where

by Jamie Rhein on

In an aim to give back to the countries in the world that offer us so much travel pleasure, and to add to the cause of making the world a better place, Trip Advisor will be donating $1,000,000 on November 12. This goodly sum will be divided up among five charitable causes:

(You can click on each link to see what each organization does.)

Trip Adviser wants the travelers of the world to help decide how to spend the money. If you go on the Trip Advisor Web site, you can vote for one of the five. Look to the top of the page for the link. You do need to sign up for Trip Advisor to participate.

All the charities will receive some money, but the aim is to find out how to best divvy up the dough. Each of the causes, in my opinion, are worthy of receiving money so you can’t really make a bad choice.

What a neat way to be involved in giving. Once you click on your choice, you can see how the distributions stack up so far.