Gold toothbrushes? Someone else’s hair on the soap? What makes or breaks you for the best and worst hotels you’ve ever stayed in?
Sam the Bellman, at the Fairmont Banff Springs, Canada.
While I was doing the prep for a chat with Jo Laverty on ABC Radio Adelaide this week, I realised that one of my deal breakers for worst hotel is if it’s haunted. If I’m staying in a hotel room on my own, I want to know that I’m the only person – living or dead – in the space. That old line from Hotel California, that ‘you can check out any time, but you can never leave,’ never sat quite right with me.
Some people love a good haunted hotel – and there are plenty of spooky stays around the world. Me? I’m not convinced they’re a good thing.
I don’t need the lights going on and off. My suitcase being moved. The unexplained knocks at the door at all hours of the night.
I’ve stayed at a few hotels in my time, and a surprising number have ghoulish backstories; the long-passed child who still cries in the night a century later, the dedicated doorman who still keeps to his post, years after he’s gone, the woman scorned, who waits, eternally, for lost love in her mansion.
But back to the gold toothbrushes – gold-plated, if you’re going to be pedantic.
The bathrooms, with their gold-plated toiletries, at Atlantis The Royal, in Dubai
It’s been my joy to review Atlantis The Royal, Dubai, one of the few (self-described) seven-star hotels in the world. (Even though I did turn up to the hotel, with its 90 pools and famed pool clubs, without my swimmers, which were left hanging in a shower cubicle in an Omani oasis. The swimsuit shopping was an experience in itself).
I’ve written about the Atlantis’ The Royal’s fabulous tea, its outrageous number and calibre of restaurants – with more Michelin stars than you could poke a stick at – and yes, it does actually have gold-plated toothbrushes, and razors, and combs, which I’ve since seen flogged on eBay.
On the flip-side, because bad news always sells, the biggest turnoff for a hotel is undoubtedly someone else’s hair. And we’re not talking about a stray strand left lovingly across your pillow after a night of passion. We’re talking short.
Curly.
And left on the soap.
And judging by the reaction of the radio host, Jo, and listeners calling or texting in, there are plenty of offenders. It also makes a very good case for liquid soap in hotel rooms, preferably from a refillable container, to make it even more eco-friendly.
If you’re curious about the seriously haunted hotel in Canada that I described in the radio interview, and want to know where it is, it’s the outrageously spooky Fairmont Banff Springs, which knows all about its ghostly guests, and even celebrates them. I swear, every time I think of walking through that hotel’s corridors, the hair on the back of my neck rises.
What are the best and worst hotels you’ve stayed in, and why were they so good or bad?
