Hotels to Avoid 2011: Filth, Vermin, Pepper Spray

One of my favorite travel features is Trip Advisor's Dirtiest Hotel picks. This year's selections for Dirtiest Hotel contain some frightening entries. There's the usual smattering of dirty and run-down and then there are the truly bizarre entries like these on the dirty hotel list:

The hotel listed as #10 dirtiest hotel in Asia probably would have made my personal #1 filth offender list if I visited and encounted the conditions described. Mahkota Hotel Melaka in Melaka, Malaysia was given a thumbs down by only 69% of reviewers. But the description of the tap water as yellowish brown along with a photo of urine-colored liquid pouring from a faucet is enough to convince me this hotel is overrated. Eight percent of reviewers called this hotel "excellent" while 46 percent called it "terrible." This hotel is supposedly a 4 star hotel, but it's hard to imagine how it laid claim to those stars when its guests say it provides yellow water that gives users rashes, has cigarette butts in the swimming pool, and is in decrepit condition (holes in the ceiling, toilets that don't flush and ripped carpets.)

Club Aqua Gumbet in Gumbet, Turkey was named worst in Europe after 121 of 165 reviewers rated it "terrible." The most disgusting complaint about the place is the sewer emptying into the pool when it rains, but in case you're thinking it might be okay outside of rainy season, consider the reports of dry blood on the bedroom floor, a lack of hot water, dirty bedding, loose wires, and even a poisonous spider biting a guest inside the room.

As for a hotel to avoid in the USA, there's Atlantic Beach Hotel in Miami. When a thief posing as concierge set up outside the hotel to steal wallets, the staff declined to ask him to leave on the grounds that he was polite, according to one reviewer. Another reviewer woke up to a stabbing in progress and pepper spray being sprayed by police. While one could ordinarily pass this off as the rare occurrence, it's a little hard to do so when another reviewer said she awoke to the stinging of pepper spray as the police chased down prostitutes at the hotel. Almost makes the moldy smell and broken-down fixtures others reported seem trivial.

Raj Residency in Chennai, India was only the #2 worst hotel in India, according to Trip Advisor reviewers. But at #2, it harbored some frightening conditions. One visitor pulled back a curtain in his sixth floor room to find a filthy floor to ceiling window; the visitor tried to wash the window with a paper towel, only to have it swing open without warning. Another guest complained that his room was locked with a padlock from the outside and unlockable from the inside. Other guests report infestations of bedbugs, mosquitoes, and cockroaches. But the most appalling report of all is that of the family that got stuck in the elevator for almost 2 hours, ultimately having to climb out between floors, only to have the hotel management respond to their complaint by saying they could have been left to rot inside the stuck elevator.