Hotels should be a haven – a place to relax, unwind and pamper yourself. But that’s often far from the case, as these headline-hitting hotel horrors reveal. From infestations and sweepingly false claims to offensive behaviour from fellow hotel guests, we look at the epic failures we'll all want to avoid during our next hotel stay.

All too often the room description fails to live up to the reality. Pregnant mother Gemma Stocks found this to her extreme disappointment and discomfort when she had to squeeze into a single bed with her child in a tiny hotel room in Benidorm. The family of four had booked a ground floor four-bed family room but were given a room on the 12th floor with three single beds. Did the views make up for it? Nope. To add insult to injury their room overlooked a building site. 

Another family were devastated to discover their dream holiday was in fact going to be on a building site. Michelle Peel, 43, booked a week at luxury four-star Swandor Topkapi Palace in Turkey with her eight-year-old daughter, who was due to undergo a major operation. But the hotel was half-finished with construction workers on site, burst water pipes and no electricity or working toilets in the room. The specially-adapted room she had booked for her wheelchair-bound daughter hadn't been built either.

We’ve all been swayed by the promise of sea views but Australian Hugh Selby was so disgruntled by the misleading images on booking site Wotif that he took his case to a tribunal and won. Images of seemingly idyllic beachside shack Rocky Point Beachfront in Haleiwa, Hawaii promised views of the water and palm trees. With a AU$300 (£165, $213)-a-night price tag, you’d hope that would be the case. But instead he found an “underground shack” with views of a scruffy kitchenette.

It’s always disappointing to see the pool is closed sign, but one family would have welcomed a roped off pool on their holiday in Tunisia last year. Instead they saw to their horror that their children were happily splashing about in a swimming pool with poo in it. Unsurprisingly, according to the story on The Sun, their son later contracted a stomach bug during their stay in the unsanitary hotel.

 

You’ve made the early morning flight, found your way to your hotel and are ready and raring for your holiday to begin. But things can go wrong when you arrive at your resort and find it's overbooked. Third-party booking sites can be the worst culprits as a family from Washington State found when they received an email just weeks before their holiday to say the lodge they had reserved was overbooked. 

It’s one thing when adults face crushing disappointment when a holiday doesn’t play out quite how it was supposed to, but when children’s dreams are ruined it’s heartbreaking. According to a report in the Daily Record, a young family’s Disney dream turned into a nightmare after a hotel booking site went bust. When they arrived at a hotel in Disneyland Paris they discovered their booking had been cancelled. Cue very sad kiddies.

Mouldy walls, dirty bed linen, stained carpets, graffiti in the bedrooms and hideous smells. These are just some of the lengthy list of complaints levelled at Birmingham Best Inn, which received 303 one-star reviews on TripAdvisor last year. No wonder it was dubbed Britain’s worst hotel by The Mirror. 

If you think guests have it hard, spare a thought for the staff. Last year Travelodge revealed some of the most ridiculous requests customers had made. Demands included installing cat bunk beds for Bengal kittens and filling the bathtub with different ice cream flavours for a wife’s 40th. Shakila Ahmed, Travelodge spokeswoman, said: “Where possible, the teams will go above and beyond to help customers... However there are some requests that they cannot help with, such as arranging dancing dolphins at Land's End.”  

Cockroaches are a common complaint of hotel-goers, especially in tropical climates. An article in the New York Post, reports that around 12% of hotels, motels and inns have had a vermin problem, according to a study by Amerisleep, which looked at 8,000 reports from inspectors at over 3,400 hotels, motels and inns in Florida. Unfortunately not much can be done to deter these notoriously hardy little critters. 

Feeling a little itchy? Leesa Dean certainly was after discovering dozens of red sores on her body following her stay at Pontins’ Prestatyn Sands Holiday Park in Wales. As well as bed bugs, she claims she saw mouse droppings in her chalet, reports the Liverpool Echo. Alarmingly this is far from unusual. According to a 2015 survey, hotels are the third most common place that bed bugs are found. It's not linked to cleanliness though, with even five-star luxury hotels hit by the little menaces.

Several tourists set to discover the delights of Noosa on Australia’s Sunshine Coast had their plans put on hold for a few hours after becoming trapped in the luxury hotel’s lift. Thankfully, they were all rescued safe and well. 

 

Reddit users regularly share some of their horrors from hotel stays. One article reveals some of the worst such as Chantottie’s account of being locked in a hotel in Athens when attempting to leave to catch an early flight. “We get to the lobby try to open the door to LEAVE the hotel... Locked. Literally locked in the hallway. Can't get back in our room and can't get out the door. No windows. Instant panic." Her party had to wake up other (grumpy) guests to borrow their key.

Meanwhile, another Reddit user experienced a hotel headache of a different kind... an annoying neighbour. But not a human one. "I was in India, a little south of Delhi. I was sitting in bed looking out the window kind of in a jet-lagged haze. Suddenly a dark blob jumped out in front of the window and rammed into my window. I nearly had a heart attack. It was a monkey, and every morning it would do the same thing. Basically, jump at the window and bang on it to get a rise." Thankfully, there aren't too many of these incidents.

A rather less amusing anecdote comes from Redditor Slamdancer, who describes finding himself staying in a ransacked hotel room. "Everything in the room has been bolted and/or chained to the walls or floor. At least, everything had been, because it's all gone now. The television, the mirror, the fridge, the end tables, the phone… they've all been stolen, and judging by the conditions left behind, a good amount of force was employed."

Tourists in Portugal were shaken awake with a fright last September when their hotels were hit by tremors. The Daily Mail reported tourists saying they “felt their whole hotel shake” as the tremors struck at 5am. The epicentre of the quake was just off the coast of Portugal – around 100 miles northwest of Leiria, which is around a two-hour drive south of Porto. Meanwhile, tourists saw their hotels collapse following the devastating 6.9 magnitude quake in Bali last August. 

You’ve checked in, the bellboy has your bags and you're about to hand your car key over to the valet. But are you sure they’re trust-worthy? Some recent news reports from the US reveal that guests' cars may not always stay parked on the property. A Nashville hotel valet was charged with stealing a guest’s car, and the same fate happened at a hotel in downtown Atlanta.

 

Bagging a hotel room with a balcony is a holiday high point. But the good news took a turn for the worse for a British couple whose third-floor balcony at the Hotel Barcelo Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic collapsed and sent them plunging 40 feet. They both suffered bad injuries and sued the tour operator, according to The Sun.

Staff and guests – including singer Robbie Williams and his wife – were safely evacuated from the exclusive Mandarin Oriental in London's Knightsbridge last summer after the historic building caught fire. The hotel had recently completed a major renovation when 20 fire engines were called to the scene after welding work apparently caused the blaze. All guests were relocated and the hotel closed. Its restaurants and spa reopened this year and its guest rooms and suites will open in spring.

READ MORE: 20 American hotels hiding historic secrets

Thousands of travellers were left fuming and out of pocket after a dubious hotel booking site cancelled their bookings and refused refunds, The Independent reported last year. Asia-based HotelQuickly, which was listed as a booking option on TripAdvisor and Trivago, suddenly reneged on thousands of bookings, informing customers of the sudden cancellations via email and only offering them a credit note.

There’s “gritty” locations and then there’s downright seedy, as a group of Scottish tourists discovered on holiday in Italy. They were bussed to Hotel Gimar in Napes by TUI reps after their flight to Glasgow was cancelled but found, to their horror, they may in fact be staying in a brothel. They later told The Scottish Sun that some rooms had mirrors above the bed and cameras in the room while men were seen coming and going all night and loud, intimate sounds could be heard.

It’s always wise to choose a themed hotel carefully. Especially if you’re travelling with someone with different ethics. One to avoid for any vegans and veggies is the BB&BB (Boebel Bratwurst Bed and Breakfast), run by a butcher near Nuremberg. The wallpaper has a sausage design, pillows are sausage-shaped and bratwurst hang from the ceiling. Room numbers are printed on butchers' knives and the soap looks like, yes you guessed it, a sausage.

One hotel guest’s unfortunate plight went viral a few years ago when he found himself caught on the hotel’s CCTV as he roamed the corridors naked. He’d just nipped out to put his room service tray in the corridor when the pesky fire-proof door slammed behind him. He then had to do the walk of shame through the hotel and go down in the lift to reception. 

Cameras also captured some rather unsavoury practises at several luxury hotels in China last year. Footage uploaded to Chinese social media site Weibo, showed hotel cleaners in 14 hotels from international hotel chains using dirty towels and flannels to wipe glasses and cutlery. They were even caught using the same cloth to clean both the toilet and sink. 

It wasn't just a holiday that ended in disaster due to a dodgy hotel, but a couple’s wedding day was ruined after the hotel lobby collapsed during their rehearsal dinner. The incident happened at Sol Rio De Luna y Mares Hotel in Cuba, trapping and injuring many members of the wedding party, including the bride and her children. The couple took legal action, according to The Sun.

Being disturbed by noisy neighbours' night-time antics is a common complaint for hotel guests, but people staying at the lavish five-star Hermitage Hotel in Monte-Carlo were confronted with intimate scenes in broad daylight as a couple “romped” on their balcony. Videos of the brazen couple, who appeared to relish the onlookers’ attention, went viral.

 

 

A couple were shocked and disappointed when they checked in for a mini-break at The Scarisbrick in Southport. According to the Liverpool Echo, their bedroom had ripped wallpaper, broken bathroom floor tiles, the window was bolted shut, and there was even a hole in the bedroom wall. If they had done a little online research, they might have seen that the hotel was ranked bottom of the 20 hotels in Southport by customers using TripAdvisor.

It’s not just mice and roaches that hotels have to contend with, pigeons can also be a real nuisance. According to reports, the Hyatt hotel chain cut ties with Hyatt Place Edmonton in Canada after it was ordered to clean up a pigeon infestation and repair a number of water leaks. An inspection by Alberta Health Services found pigeons and their faeces in nine separate heating and ventilation units on the roof.

A couple had the fright of their lives as they started unpacking their bags at The Cumberland Hotel in London when a poisonous hognose snake slithered out. An RSPCA officer was called to the scene and retrieved the 12-inch long snake with its distinctive red and yellow markings inside a pillowcase. It’s thought the snake was a lost pet who had snuck into their suitcase while they were in the Middle East.

If you think that’s terrifying, how about coming face-to-face with this fearsome predator? Guy Whittall unknowingly slept above the eight-foot Nile crocodile for eight hours at the Humani lodge in Zimbabwe, after the croc had snuck inside. The beast was only discovered when a maid went in to clean the room while he was having breakfast. It was caught and released unharmed.

There’s nothing like a strong cuppa to start your morning, but you might want to think twice before firing up the hotel coffee machine. A study from the University of Valencia has revealed just how dirty the machines can get. All of the machines analysed recorded a “moderately to highly abundant” quantity of bacteria. The article in the Express goes on to warn that you should steer clear of your hotel room kettle too – some people use it to wash their dirty underwear in. Yuck. For more revelations like this, see our gallery on Secrets the travel industry doesn't want you to know

There’s plenty of appeal for an all-inclusive holiday, particularly when it comes to the food. But British holidaymakers staying at all-inclusive resorts and hotels in Riviera Maya and Cancun, Mexico, suffered from severe sickness and diarrhoea last summer. This followed a number of outbreaks in previous years too. The Express reported that tourists were suffering from the Cyclospora parasitic bug, which was linked to contaminated food supplied to hotels throughout the resort areas. 

Hayley Wells and her husband had a wonderful stay at the W Hotel Lakeshore in Chicago until they got a second bill on their return. To their shock, they were being charged for an extra three nights with additional charges of nearly $4,000 (3.1k) for internet, car valet, phone calls and room service. It's thought someone may have scammed the couple by hijacking their reservation after they used an automatic checkout service.

Waking up to blaring fire alarms is always disconcerting but guests at a Melbourne hotel were faced with flooding not fire as they were evacuated by fire crews one evening. A man had opened the fire hydrants on 18 floors, sending water gushing throughout the building. He barricaded himself inside an office but was later arrested. 

Guests at global hotel chain Starwood were left vulnerable after a cyber attack was thought to have exposed the records of 500 million Marriott International customers over the past four years. The group’s help website now states that the number of potentially involved guests is lower than the 500 million originally estimated – it has identified approximately 383 million records were exposed. The attack has since been traced to a Chinese spy agency.

The notion of being snowed in for a few days at a lovely hotel might sound appealing, but guests at a hotel in southern Germany realised the scary reality after an enormous avalanche buried the building last month. Hotel Hubertus in the village of Balderschwang was evacuated and nobody suffered any injuries, although the hotel sustained serious damage.

READ MORE: Time warp travel: the world's eeriest abandoned hotels and airports

It took 17 years for Nick Burchill to overcome his embarrassment after he was banned from the Fairmont Empress hotel in Victoria, Canada for letting seagulls destroy his room. He had been staying at the hotel for business and had left a suitcase filled with pepperoni by an open window, which was descended on by the greedy gulls. Burchill returned to the hotel last year to apologise for the incident and see if he could convince them to lift the ban. They did.

We’re certainly a forgetful lot, according to Travelodge's 2018 Lost and Found Audit which found some truly bizarre items left behind in its guest rooms. These included a blue-eyed cockatoo called Brexit, a 1943 bottle of Champagne worth over £1,000 ($1.3k), an ice cream van and a five-foot teddy bear made of sweet and savoury popcorn. The hotel chain reports a rise in more valuable items being left behind at its hotels, due to an increase in business customers.

 

Lazy mornings are what holidays are all about, aren't they? But snooze and you lose out, it seems. Nothing quite gets the stress levels rising like realising all of the sun loungers have been hogged and it’s not even 9am. A viral video taken at the four-star Servatur Waikiki Gran Canaria showed guests dashing to lay towels on the loungers as soon as the pool opened at 8am then disappearing for breakfast. A source at the hotel told The Sun, that the Brits were the worse offenders followed by the Irish.

READ MORE: What you can and can't steal from planes, hotels & cruise ships