SUMMER’S FILTHIEST WEEKEND
We check into the UK’s worst hotel
The room is not what was promised. There’s a bed, two lumpy pillows, a Formica table and two plastic chairs set up like a dentist’s waiting room. The window has no latch, just a nail sticking out of the frame. There’s red lipstick smeared on the wallpaper (oh god, I hope it’s lipstick), and toothpaste on the shower curtain (oh god, I hope it’s toothpaste). While examining the sheets, I find some old tissues down the back of the bed. “Cheer up,” my boyfriend says. “You said you wanted a dirty weekend.”
We’re booked in for the night at the audaciously named Sparkle Hotel, formerly the Birmingham Best Inn Hotel. Charmingly situated on an A-road junction near Dudley, the hotel’s official spiel* promises “an ideal venue for conferences, weddings or other celebrations”, boasting “exceptional service, fantastic dining and an all-encompassing, unique hotel experience” with “characteristic features”. Joining names like The Plaza, The Ritz and The Chateau Marmont, Sparkle is actually quite famous. Don’t recognise it? Confused by its lack of celebrity guests? That may be because you know it better by one of its nicknames: “Birmingham Worst Inn Hotel”, “Flea Bitten Pit”, or “AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID”.
With a staggering 330 one-star reviews on TripAdvisor, and plenty more across other booking sites, the hotel has been branded by more than one tabloid newspaper as “the worst in Britain”. Online, guests swap tales of bedbugs and blood stains, furniture more at home on the set of a horror movie and nocturnal activity more in keeping with a brothel .“I’d rather sleep in a bus shelter wrapped up in a sleeping bag. ”“A night in the Bates Motel would be preferable. ”“Stay Here Only If You Cant Find A Ditch [sic]” “ABSALUTLEY DISGUSTING [sic]!” “The pillows and duvet are that yellow they make Homer Simpson’s face look white.” (Er, sick.)
But as we packed the antibacterial hand gel the night before our trip, I was determined to keep an open mind. Could it really be so bad? After all, we know that online reviews need to be taken – like every Michelinstarred meal called “BLAND!” by @UnderwhelmedofUxbridge – with a large pinch of salt. And in these perfection-obsessed times of ours, don’t we expect a bit too much? We’re becoming spoiled; bratty millennials who complain about the Wi-Fi signal at the Parthenon, or kick off because the café on top of Ben Nevis doesn’t have any oat milk. Have we reached a point where we can’t trust reviews at all? Where the only way to truly know if something is worth your cash (and five stars) is to see it with your own eyes? Smell it with your own nose? There was only one way to find out.
On arrival at Sparkle, we are handed a key and a TV remote. “Do you serve breakfast?” I ask. They tell me they do not. In fact, the only “fantastic dining” I can find available is a vending machine in reception. Wordlessly, the receptionist points
us down a warren of long, sinister corridors and dark staircases, through a door propped open by a bundle of rags. My boyfriend and I hold hands and, like a latter-day Hansel and Gretel (though not, thankfully, related), I think about leaving a trail of crisps behind me to ensure safe passage back. The vibe is more eccentric, faded “murder-mystery realness” than the prisony aesthetic I expected. Moth-eaten tartan carpets, peeling floral wallpaper, oil paintings that could be passed off as shabby chic in a low-rent gastropub. An ornate mirror that says “Dale Winton” on it for no discernible reason
“The vibe is very ‘murder mystery’”
(“characteristic features”). There’s a bookcase filled with leather-bound volumes of Agatha Christie, which might be elegant if it didn’t have an empty Stella can sitting on top. The rooms are named after local beauty spots, and I’m cheered to see someone has turned “Blackheath” into “Black death” through an enterprising use of a marker pen. This is the kind of experience where wordplay comes easily. Within five minutes we’ve christened it “The Grand Pooandpest Hotel” and “The Shitz”.
Part of me, I’ll admit, wanted to think we were too laid-back and bohemian to be bothered by a crap hotel. We’re young! We’re chill! We’re not about to freak out over a stray pube, or loo roll that isn’t folded into a point! In fact, I still believe this right up until we walk into the bathroom and discover that it doesn’t have any loo roll at all. Or towels. Or soap. And a centipede crawls out from under the bath.
“Oh, we don’t provide soap,” says the middle-aged man on the front desk, with a rising inflection as though I’ve asked for a free pot of Crème De La Mer. Toilet roll and towels, thankfully, are handed over, but there’s no apology. Not even a flicker of recognition that your average hotel guest might consider these quite fundamental items rather than fancy-pants extras.
All my breezy nonchalance goes down the drain. “Also,” I boom, in my best Hyacinth Bucket voice, “Our window doesn’t close!”
“Well, there’s nothing I can do about that,” he replies, more bemused than rude.
“Right. It’s just… I’m worried about security during the night?”
He considers this for a moment. “Room 460? On that floor I should think you’ll be OK.”
“What happens on the other floors?” I yelp.
“Oh,” he smirks, “I couldn’t possibly say.”
I can’t complain. Literally, I can’t – it’s a dying art. Recent research by the Financial Conduct Authority found that 75% of people now avoid
“I’m analysing every noise for signs of orgies”
making complaints entirely, with millennials more likely than our older counterparts to shy away through fear of “awkwardness” or “making a scene”. But later, behind the blessed anonymity of a screen name, we’ll let rip. We’ve all done it: the sweet smiles and “yes-it’s-lovely-thank-you”s to the waiter, while we mentally draft an online review with all the critical savagery of a young Michael Winner. With 490 million unique users per month (that’s almost one in every 15 people on earth), TripAdvisor has more clout in the hospitality industry than any influencer could dream of – as does Google, which is now the fastest-growing review site.† Those casual reviews, tipsily tapped out on the bus home without a second thought, can lose people jobs and make or break businesses.
Which makes it all the more surprising, really, that Sparkle Hotel has any guests at all. I had worried that a place like this would only attract people in pretty desperate circumstances, and we’d feel like voyeuristic snobs even being there. It’s a privilege, after all, to be able to laugh at a grim hotel, rather than just being glad to have a roof over your head. But, actually, the few other guests we encounter look just as giggly and grossed out as we are.
“Why are you staying here?” I whisper to a bloke in his early twenties who I find lost on our corridor. He tells me he’s going to a rave tonight. It’s just a cheap bed for a few hours. And, to be fair, a £25 room does sound like an offer you can’t refuse – until you find yourself tying your laptop charger around the window and radiator as a makeshift booby-trap.
Blame the Agatha Christie atmosphere, but I find myself wanting to solve the mystery of how Sparkle Hotel got so bad. “How long have you worked here?” I ask the polite teenage boy who is manning reception alone for half of our stay. Three years, he tells me. “And what are the owners like?” I smile conspiratorially, doing my best Miss Marple, but he’s not about to dish any dirt.
“Nice,” he shrugs. “Everyone who works here is nice.”
Trouble is, nice doesn’t cut it. Speaking to other hospitality pros, you can see how easy it can be to fall
into a vicious circle of bad reviews, dwindling business and slipping standards – especially in today’s cut-throat climate. The worse the online reputation, the fewer the bookings and the lower the takings, which means less cash to pay for cleaners and maintenance. And so it continues.
“The most common complaint was slow service, because we were so understaffed,” says Millie,‡ a former waitress at a hotel on the Kent coast that received a raft of one-star reviews. “Most of the guests were on coach trips around the country, so I don’t think anyone elected to stay there through choice – it was just part of the pre-booked itinerary.”
“The worst thing that ever happened behind the scenes was when the bar manager’s pet snake escaped,” recalls Michelle,‡ who used to work at a hotel in a small Welsh town with a host of dismal reviews. “A guest found it weeks later. I think it was in their bath.” Scraping by on bar profits alone, the hotel’s owners had pretty much given up caring, she tells me. “There was no cleaner for the last three months I worked there,” she says. “People complained constantly about the smell.”
Snakes and stench aside, it’s hard not to feel a little sorry for the managers trying to do their best at the helm of these sinking ships. I speak to David,‡ a hotel general manager with more than 30 years’ experience up and down the UK – from five-star resorts to hotels right at the bottom of the TripAdvisor league table. Unsurprisingly, he’s wary of online review culture. “[They are] sometimes useful, but many people review the negatives with the aim of getting compensation,” he says. Just like Sparkle Hotel’s “in-house restaurant”, people make up any old bollocks on the internet.
Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UK Hospitality, agrees that the free-for-all system can make it too easy for guests to mouth off without giving hotels the chance to redeem themselves. “Arguably, the culture of online reviews could promote fairness and competition, and keep businesses on their toes. But, in reality, it is open to abuse,” she says, having seen places become the target of personal vendettas. “It has been difficult for them to respond without fanning the flames.”
TripAdvisor itself is no stranger to critical backlash. For years the site has been accused of doing too little to crack down on fake reviews – some of which have been exposed as the work of rival hoteliers, rather than guests.
Sometimes, however, the armchair critics have their uses. In 2016 the Fiorenzo Cazari hotel in Rhyl was shut down after online reviews flagged up serious electrical and fire hazards. One eagle-eyed guest who stayed at Sparkle Hotel the same month we did claimed that the fire alarm system had some faults, so really a lack of soap might be the least of our worries…
Back at our Discomfort Inn, unable to sleep because I’m analysing every noise for signs of fire/murder/ orgies, I send our “romantic minibreak” photos to my friends on WhatsApp. Soon my phone is buzzing with horror. “GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN,” they message, sending links to nearby Marriotts and Travelodges.
But the strange thing is, I find myself almost defensive of poor Sparkle Hotel. Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome, but among all the grottiness, there are anomalies – like the shiny new flat-screen TV, or the bafflingly fast and reliable Wi-Fi –
“One guest found a snake in their bath”
to suggest that someone, somewhere, must be putting a bit of effort in. During the course of the weekend, “Could be worse!” becomes our unofficial tagline. When the shower is surprisingly hot and powerful. When the sheets are actually crisp and clean. When nothing bites or robs us in the night. Sparkle Hotel: could be worse!
We need more of those kinds of reviews, I think. Like many parts of modern life, the internet has handed consumer power back to ordinary people – but like so many areas of the internet, there’s not much room for nuance. We deal in extremes and absolutes, hyperbole and hysterics. We’re here for the good, the bad and the viral. And while there’s no denying a few businesses deserve to be brought down, you have to wonder how many others could be built back up with a little more constructive criticism. The next morning, on the way to celebrate our survival with Egg McMuffins, I meet a fellow guest in the car park. She’s barefoot in last night’s dress, clutching her heels and looking faintly shellshocked.
“Awful. Absolutely awful,” she gasps. “So bad. Our room stunk of weed.”
But wasn’t she prepared? Surely she read the reviews first? “Nope! He booked it because it was cheap,” she winces, gesturing to a man cowering in the car behind her .“NEVER AGAIN.” It’s hard to tell if she means the hotel or the boyfriend.
“Still!” I call towards her rapidly departing back. “You have to admit, the Wi-Fi was surprisingly good. It could be worse!”