Think you had a bad holiday experience? It could have been worse

With an early morning flight to catch, I recently needed to stay overnight near Heathrow Airport. Purely for research purposes I decided to book a room at the lowest rank­ed lodging I could find on the TripAdvisor website. There were a handful of flea-bitten contenders and plenty of damning reviews but one particular sentence encapsulated the frustration, anger and disappointment of staying in a crap hotel: “Would rather sleep under a bridge than stop here again.”

I booked immediately – what could possibly go wrong?

As it turned out, the staff were charming and my renovated room was spotless. Even the bed bugs had checked out. New owners were in the process of turning the place around, which goes to show that pro­pri­etors will raise their game (or sell to some­one who will) if enough of us whine online.

Here, then, is a selection of gripes and harangues taken from hotel booking web­sites. I won’t mention any of the underper­form­ing establishments by name, as I don’t like to create more enemies than necessary, but if you’re curious, a spot of search-engine detective work will reveal all. Bear in mind that they may all be under renovation or new ownership by the time you read this.

1 There are dozens of hotels in the vici­nity of Mumbai International Airport and maybe it’s unfair to highlight a low-scoring property that has only received half a dozen reviews. Still, if you can’t even get the basics right: “It took an age to find the place, based on the fact that they submitted an incorrect address to booking.com.”