40+ Airbnb And Hotel Fails That Will Have People Choosing A Staycation Instead
By Bruna L
Traveling is always an adventure! It doesn’t even matter where you’re going to; you are guaranteed to have a blast! Did you know that traveling not only allows you to see the world in person, but it also has benefits for your health? That’s right! Some researches show that traveling reduces your stress and anxiety levels, helping you recharge and making you happier! Of course, it’s not always smooth sailing when you’re out there – it’s easy to get lost if you’re not paying attention to your surroundings, communicating can be a problem if you don’t speak the local language and, sometimes, you’re so excited about the prospect of vising another country that you don’t really pay attention to the kind of accommodations you’re booking! If you don’t want to end up in any of these situations, then this article is for you! Here are 40+ Airbnb And Hotel fails that make us happy to stay home instead!
Technically correct
Many hotels out there have pool areas, especially if they are located in a country with warmer weather. There’s no better way to cool off after a day or two of exploring the city than by relaxing in a nice pool, right?
Well, if you are staying at this hotel, you better not have brought your swimsuit. Otherwise, you will be very, very disappointed – While there is a pool area, it’s not exactly what you would’ve expected! You can still have some fun, but please put on some pants first!
Deceiving advertisement at its best
When deciding where you are going to travel to, one big factor is how appealing the country is to you. Not only culturally but also aesthetically. Taking pictures and recording videos is a great part of the whole traveling experience, after all!
That’s why so many people don’t mind spending a little more money to get a better view from their rooms! Well, if you’re planning on doing that, you’ll want to do your research properly, or you risk a situation like the one above!
No running allowed!
A common problem with some hotels, especially ones with too many families with kids or drunk college students on their break – which is basically the same thing – is that people may cause a ruckus in the halls, bothering other guests.
Concerned about that, this hotel in Cologne, Germany, decided to install these carpets with optical illusions to prevent guests from running down the halls! The illusion work along the whole floor, but only from one direction. We hope no one ends up injured!
Fitness fail
For some people, vacations are a wonderful chance to relax and let go of their usual routine, including exercising and diet. For others, though, working out is as necessary as eating and drinking, and even on vacation, they can’t let bear the idea of not working out on a daily basis.
If that’s you that we have just described, then you better not book this hotel for your next vacation! While they do have a fitness center – and you can even see what appears to be a treadmill inside it – it obviously cannot be used since it is chock-full of couches for some reason!
A bathroom for ants
The least someone can expect to have in their hotel room is a bed and a bathroom. As long as you have a place to sleep and a place to shower and do your necessities, and everything is clean and comfortable, it’s fine! But sometimes you don’t even have that!
Sure, the room above does have a bathroom, but it is so small an average-sized person cannot use it! It’s important to check pictures before booking a hotel, but sometimes pictures can be deceiving, and we believe that’s probably what happened here!
No privacy at all
Our safety should be our biggest concern while traveling. Our carefully packed clothes, valuables, and documents, and even our lives, are risked if we don’t plan ahead and do the research correctly. So imagine the surprise these tourists got when they found out how their room’s door closes!
That’s right! That’s a really old door hanging on a sliding door rail! Everything seems so out of place; we wonder just what exactly the hotel owners thought when they decided that this was an okay thing to do! No safety at all for their guests, yikes!
Lost in translation
If you’re going on vacation to a country and you don’t really speak the local language, it is probably a good idea to take a couple of classes first. Bringing a tourists’ dictionary is not a bad idea either and keeping a translation app with you on your phone at all times is essential!
Of course, some hotels will try their best to accommodate you, but things can get weird if they also don’t know your language very well! Just take a look at the sign above! You can definitely understand what they’re trying to say, but it still is pretty funny!
Do not disturb sign
Some hotels do whatever they can to make sure your stay is as comfortable as possible. Depending on where you’re staying, you can expect anything from warm sheets to impeccable room service and more! Unfortunately, not every hotel out there is worried about these things!
What can we say about a hotel that doesn’t even provide one of those “do not disturb” signs? Probably best to keep your expectations low because they clearly don’t care much about their guests. In these situations, the only thing to do is improvise your own sign!
So far away
Having a big bathroom in your hotel room is a privilege not many people have. Having enough space to remove your clothes and even do a little dancing and singing is definitely a blessing, but do you know what is not a blessing? The spacing used in this bathroom!
Just imagine you went to a fancy restaurant and now that you are back in your room, you have to use the toilet for… ahem, emergency reasons. It’s all well and good until you need the toilet paper. If you don’t have a gadget arm to deploy, you better be ready for the waddle of shame!
Private movie theater
Some hotels can get pretty fancy when it comes to what amenities they have available for their guests. Huge pools and hot tubs, saunas, gyms, presidential rooms the size of houses. So, it’s not really a surprise when we see a hotel advertisement saying they have their own movie theater.
The problem is: Reality can be extremely disappointing, especially if you’re counting on catching a movie for the night. While everything else seems to be straight out of a proper movie theater, the screen itself is nothing but a small TV!
Read the sign
For some people, elevators are a blessing – They are the fastest way to get to whichever floor you need to be on, you don’t get sweaty, and your muscles don’t get tired when you use them. For others, elevators are panic-inducing death traps, tiny boxes of fear and trauma!
Both of these people would probably agree that the elevator pictured above is not exactly to be trusted, though. After all, button number 2 should take you to the second floor, right? Wrong! Here, if you want to go to the second floor, you need to press 6 as the sign says. But why?
One size fits all
Usually, hotel bathrooms are filled to the brim with stuff for their guests to use. From tiny shampoo bottles and toothpaste tubes to single-use soap bars, you are sure to have a great time in the shower and not spend a penny on it!
One of the items guests love the most, though, is their towels and bathrobes! They usually are super comfortable and allow you not to worry about wearing actual clothes while in your room. Unfortunately, if you’re too tall or too short, your robe may not be as comfortable as you’d like – Just look at the picture above!
No view at all
As we have said before, the view from your room is one thing people look forward to the most when booking a stay at a hotel. No one wants to wake up every single day of their vacation only to have a boring view outside, after all!
Well, if you’re staying at the hotel above, your stay just got a little bit more disappointing. While the room at some point did have a window, nowadays it is completely blocked! The owners probably did that because of the air conditioning, but that’s for sure the laziest solution!
A lawsuit waiting to happen
Staircases are the worst! Depending on what floor you’re on, you’re sure to get all sweaty and tired just climbing all the flights to your room. Not only that, but for some reason, some hotels like to get creative with their stairs designs, and things can end up badly!
Just look at the picture above – It’s definitely a lawsuit waiting to happen! This is not on a boat, by the way, but in an actual land-based hotel in Denmark! This staircase, in particular, leads up to the main bedroom and, apparently, it’s pretty common in Europe.
Tiny bathroom
If you are a bigger person or just have longer legs, this hotel is definitely not for you! Apparently, the architect responsible for this project didn’t pay much attention to the size of the bathrooms, causing design flaws like the one below!
That’s right! The bathroom is so small, the door couldn’t be opened! It was necessary to cut some of it off to allow people entry to the room. You better know exactly what you want to do in there because we’re not really sure you can move around easily if you change your mind!
Juliet balcony
Not every hotel room out there will have balconies, especially the cheaper ones. If you do want a balcony, you will probably have to pay more, but that’s a compromise some people are willing to make. Imagine how disappointed the person who booked the room below is, then!
Those are called Juliet balconies and are actually pretty common, especially in big cities. They are supposed to be narrow like that, but the owner probably didn’t specify that! That’s why it is so important always to check the pictures and reviews of the place you’re staying in, folks!
Stained chair
There are plenty of horror stories about hotels out there. Some of them involve bad service from the hotel staff or concierge, but the most terrifying ones certainly are the ones about lack of hygiene – dirty sheets and clogged toilets? No, thanks!
The picture above may not be quite as scary or disgusting as finding out your sheets have not been washed, but it still is a testimony of a lack of hygiene by the place’s owners! Who would want to sit on a chair with an old stain like that? Certainly not us!
Shocking experience
There is a reason why people should never have electronics in their bathrooms. Have you ever tried to mix electricity and water? We know you haven’t; otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be reading this today! These two things together are extremely deadly, after all!
Then why did the person who designed this bathroom think it was a good idea to have a hairdryer this close to the shower? Not only that but what seems to be an open outlet too! We’ll never know what they were thinking, but hopefully, no one will get hurt!
Glass door
If you are shy about using the bathroom in front of other people, then you better stay away from this hotel. For some reason, someone had the brilliant idea of having glass doors installed in the bathroom instead of solid, wood ones!
Granted, the glass is frosted, not clear, but still! Other people inside your hotel room definitely can see what you’re doing in there. Imagine the embarrassment of sitting for half an hour on the toilet and then having to explain you got distracted playing Candy Crush!
Misleading picture
When you are looking for a place to stay during your vacation, you better pay careful attention to the pictures in all of the ads. Sometimes, though, looking at pictures is not enough to know exactly what the place you’re booking really looks like, as we can see below!
The guest above expected to have a nice swimming pool for his use during his vacation, but all he got was a small above-ground pool! According to him, though, he wasn’t fazed. The pool was clean, and everything else was perfect, so why get mad?
Micro fridge
When you’re using Airbnb or other similar services, you’re probably staying in someone’s house. So, some of the things you have available at proper hotel rooms won’t be available for you unless you’re lucky. Mini fridges are one of those things!
Well, the guests above thought they were the luckiest people in the world when they asked for a mini-fridge in their room and the owner complied! Unfortunately, they weren’t. The fridge was so tiny it almost couldn’t fit a banana! How disappointing!
Peek-a-boo
Imagine you are on vacation with your family or friends. You all have spent hours on the plane, and now all you want is to take a shower and go to bed so you can start exploring the new country as soon as possible!
And then, a big surprise! Maybe the photos didn’t show it, maybe you didn’t read the comments, but it is there for everyone to see: A window inside the bathroom! And not any kind of window, but a nightmarish one since it looks straight into the main bedroom! Who designed that??
Spelling matters
Marriage is a big deal for most couples out there. There is so much pressure; it’s not uncommon for people to turn into “bridezillas” or “groomzillas.” In these situations, everything must be perfect, including the honeymoon! Well, we hope the couple below is not too picky!
At first, the picture may look normal. Just your average hotel room, all prepped up for the newlywed’s arrival! There are rose petals strewn around, towel art, the whole nine yards. Then you pay attention, and it hits you like a truck: Honeymoon is spelled wrong! Oh no!
Unusable pool
Unfortunately for anyone who enjoys traveling, it is not uncommon to find hotels with misleading listings, some of which can be considered straight-up lies! Take the hotel below, for example. Its ad said it has a swimming pool for the guests, but what you will find if you ever stay there is a whole different story!
That’s right! The swimming pool is absolutely unusable and doesn’t seem to be on the card to be refurbished any time soon. Those things you see inside it? Broken toilets! Yikes! This hotel is located in Birmingham, Alabama, if you’re wondering where to avoid for your next trip!
The irony
Unfortunately, most people probably will never understand how hard the world is for people with disabilities until they themselves have to go through an experience like that. That’s why to get educated in these matters is so important! Just look at the picture below!
A pretty normal bathroom, right? A large door and a wheelchair sign indicating it can be used by wheelchair users. But if you look to the bottom of the picture, your blood will probably boil – to access this bathroom; you’ll have to climb stairs! Talk about not ok!
Deathtrap
When it comes to staircases and carpets, the best thing a hotel owner can do is hire a professional to do the work. A professional will know how to avoid dangerous bulges that can trip people and, most importantly, can work with different patterns, so we don’t end up with a staircase like the one below!
The owner of this building probably wanted to cut costs wherever he could, and that’s how this staircase ended up like that! Just a little look, and we’re already getting dizzy! Hopefully, people will use the rails when going up and down because this staircase is definitely a deathtrap!
Poolception
There’s nothing better than wanting something and then getting twice as much of that thing, right? That applies to a lot of things – from food to money! It also applies to swimming pools, although we don’t think the person responsible for this quite understood what we meant.
It’s literally a smaller pool inside a bigger one. It doesn’t even make sense if you think about it! Perhaps the bigger pool was too big, and people got concerned about the kids safety? We can see a few balls and floaters, so that’s probably it, but it still is really weird!
Murder hotel
This hall here is not for the faint of heart nor for people who have an aversion to blood. At first sight, it looks as if the little cart had run over a body and now is spreading blood all over the place! Definitely something straight out of a horror movie!
If you manage not to run away and actually look closely, though, you’ll notice that there’s no blood at all! That’s actually just the carpet design, and apparently, people pay good money for them! Thousands of dollars for a carpet that looks like a serial killer’s dream? No, thanks!
Not enough space
Another example of bad design is if you don’t have enough space for what you have in mind, maybe it’s not a good idea to use it! Maybe the architect responsible didn’t pay attention to the measurements, or maybe the owner wanted to save on costs; either way, this bathroom is way too small!
An average-sized person cannot use that sink, that’s for sure! And apparently, there’s a toilet too, considering the toilet paper holder is over there! Is there enough legroom, though? We’re not so sure about that. All we know is that this bathroom is a claustrophobic’s biggest nightmare!
Little prank
Sometimes people amuse themselves in the weirdest and most unexpected ways. At least, that’s what happened when a man went on vacation in Egypt and left his room for the day. When he came back, the cleaner had left this monkey made out of towels behind to greet him!
Apparently, it is pretty common in Egypt for the cleaning staff to pull pranks like this inside the guests’ rooms! We don’t know about you, but if we were in a foreign country and came back to this, we would probably pack our stuff and leave!
Dangerous location
Looks can be deceiving. If you have any experience online, then you definitely know that! We need to take certain measures to ensure we are safe when using the internet; no one wants to get scammed when buying stuff online or booking a hotel room, after all!
Sometimes, though, we get exactly what we want, with a few extras. The extras can be good, bad, or just unexpected – which is the case above! When the guest booked a room in this beautiful Polish hotel, he definitely didn’t expect it to be right next to a power plant!
Wet bathroom floor
When it comes to people’s likes and dislikes, there isn’t a universal truth. Take the bathroom, for example. Some people don’t mind leaving the toilet seat up; some do. Some people prefer hot showers, others like cold ones. One thing that really bugs most people is a wet floor, though!
If you don’t like the feeling of a wet bathroom floor under your feet, then maybe skipping this hotel is the best choice for you. Why? Because there is a one-inch gap between the shower doors, and no matter how hard you try, water will always spill out of the box!
The view of dreams
As we have said before, people really don’t mind paying more to stay in the perfect hotel room. Bigger beds, comfier bathrobes, better room service, air-conditioning, cable TV! One of the things that definitely help people make up their minds is the view, of course!
But don’t go trusting the pictures only; otherwise, you’ll find yourself like the person above! They thought they had booked an amazing room with the perfect view of the skyline, because that’s exactly what it looked like! Unfortunately, when they got there, they discovered it was only a well-placed billboard outside their window!
Puzzling hotel
Puzzles are a great way to improve your brain. Studies have shown that solving puzzles regularly can help with your memory, your logic skills, and even your problem-solving capabilities! Besides, there’s something very fulfilling about solving that puzzle that’s been bothering you for days now!
But when we are on vacation, all we want is to relax by the pool and not have to think about anything at all! Unfortunately, the guests staying at this hotel don’t have this privilege! We bet you can’t find your room here, no matter how much Sudoku you have played in your life!
Weird place for a bathroom
Depending on where you’re staying, you may have to let go of some privileges. Of course, if you’re staying at a proper hotel, you’re probably going to have your own bathroom, room service, cable tv etc. But if you’re booking an Airbnb or similar, your choices may be limited.
Take the picture above, for example. No, you’re not hallucinating – This is indeed a two-piece bathroom set on the landing of a staircase! Maybe it was the cheapest option available; maybe the host lied about having a private bathroom for the guest!
Why?
If you do your research right, you probably never have to worry about staying at a bad hotel. You will spend a little more money, of course, but nothing beats knowing you, and your stuff is safe and sound for the duration of your trip!
If you want to save money, though, you better be even more careful; otherwise you’ll end up spending the night somewhere like the place above! Turning off the air conditioner when leaving the room is fine, but barricading the doors at night? Why??
Unplug it and see what happens!
Electrical work is one of the most important parts of building a house – Or in this case, a hotel! The wrong cable connected to the wrong thing, and you’ll probably start a fire! Knowing that, why would anyone do what the hotel owners did below?
Yes, it is an electrical cord coming out of the wall, and yes, it is connected to an outlet sitting right beside it! It looks goofy, but it’s also potentially dangerous! We don’t know what’s been powered by it. What if the whole world collapses if someone gets curious and unplug it?
Bad showerhead
A long hot shower can help you with many more things than just cleaning your body. If you have ever used a powerful showerhead, then you know what we’re talking about! Warm water, the right pressure, and all your problems dissapear down the drain!
And there’s nothing more stressful than the moments leading to your vacation. You have to find someone to babysit your pets and water your plants, your cab may be late and your whole flight delayed! All that for you to arrive at the hotel and have to deal with a bad showerhead. Infuriating!
Risk of hazard
No matter how well you do your research, some situations are just out of our control when it comes to hotel rooms. Take a look at the picture below, for example. Everything seems to be in order with the room, except for the obvious leak!
And it’s not just any kind of leak, but the kind that can become pretty deadly, pretty quickly! Water and electricity don’t mix well at all, and we are sure this was a shocking experience for the guest! Hopefully, no one got hurt!
Scary painting
The color of the paint on the walls of a hotel is an essential thing to consider. Does it hurt the eyes? Is it boring? Will the guests like it? Some people are more conservative and settle on a simple pastel color; others are bolder and end up with some pretty unusual wall decorations!
For some reason, the owner of the hotel above decided it was a great idea to have a life-sized man wearing nothing but a bathrobe painted on the wall of the staircase leading to the fitness center of the building! Just what was he thinking?
Trap in disguise
People have different opinions about what causes the worst physical pain out there, but there is something we can all agree on – Stubbing your toe, especially your little one, is definitely one of the most painful experiences a person can have!
That’s why we don’t understand how anyone could conceive the idea of the doorstopper above! If only there was something that could keep the door open but could be moved out of the way whenever we wanted, right? Oh, well. Guess we just don’t have that kind of technology yet!
Questionable art choice
There are plenty of hotels out there that are famous for all the beautiful works of art decorating their halls. This one clearly isn’t one of them! Who thought it would be a good idea to have this horrifying art piece decorating the dining room?
It’s probably just marble or something similar, but we can’t help but notice just how much it looks like a bunch of wet hair stuck to the wall! The more we look, the worst it gets, too – Now it even looks like some pale man’s hairy chest! Please, make it stop!
People are sleeping here!
Safety measures are important everywhere, with fire alarms and fire escapes being the most common ones out there. Well, apparently, if you use this fire exit, you better be quiet about it – No one wants to bother the guests while they sleep, even if there is a fire raging on the 3rd floor!
The truth is, this is just a low-budget rural hotel in Saskatchewan. Probably there is no fire alarm attached to the door, meaning that nothing really happens when you open it. Extremely risky, of course, but at least the guests will never be woken up at night!
Google Translate at its best
If you have any kind of business that caters to English-speaking patrons only, it is important to make sure they understand what they’re getting – Especially if your business is a restaurant! Hiring a proper translator is the best course of action here, but some people don’t want to spend money on that!
While Google Translate is a great tool for emergencies, most of the time, it is a curse disguised as a blessing! Just look at the menu above, and you’ll see! Not only it’s impossible to understand what each dish is; everything is just plain silly!