Why are British hotels so unremitingly crap?

[Fab Foodie]

I travel ... a lot, but mostly overseas, predominantly Europe but occasionally further afield and yoiu know what, on the whole hotels, resteraunts etc are pretty excellent. The buildings, rooms, environments are generally good, the service excellent but not overpowering and food is usually more than acceptable and often very good indeed, both in chains and independants.

Tonight I decided to stay-over near our Bristol factory and am staying at a 'Country Club' hotel, looks fine on the internet, but it's a mess, the building is/was 'designed' in best described as a random style of nothing in particular that's good, the staff are fairly hopeless, the beer choice is crap and the foods awful, they'd run out of anchovies for the Ceaser salad ....
I dispair, and it's £90 a night.
No wonder the Premiere Inn is always full.

 

[toroddf]

They are trying to live up to the standards set by Fawlty Towers ?

 

[growingvegetables]

Tent for me. Cold, sometimes damp, but by God the cooking's good.

 

[lukesdad]

Cheapskate

 

[Brandane]

It is one more reason why I don't like traveling in Britain (along with traffic jams and expensive, unreliable public transport). It doesn't seem to be a case of getting what you pay for either. I have recently stayed in an excellent B&B for £45 (got lucky for once), and have in the past when I could afford it, paid a lot more to stay in places that were shockingly bad. Stay-cations anyone? You're having a larf, Prime Minister .

 

[MossCommuter]

Because "hospitality" is not seen as a profession in the UK.

 

[dan_bo]

Germany has the best hotels IME. France the worst. Ours generally aint too bad.

 

[slowmotion]

On the rare occasions that we stay somewhere, we always stay at pubs. We don't want to pay for uniformed staff and fake servility, nor do we like the hushed tones of hotel bars and dining rooms.
And don't even get me on the subject of hotel mini bars.....

 

[TheDoctor]

Germany has good hotels, I'll grant you, but French ones are pretty good too.
Most English hotels I've stayed in have been shockingly poor, and ruddy expensive.

 

[Brandane]

WHY are they bad? Probably because us Brits don't like to complain about bad service, so we reap what we sow. If providers of a "service" think they can get away with serving up a sub-standard product while emptying our bank accounts at the same time, then that is exactly what they will do!

 

[ColinJ]

I was sent down to London on business about 20 years ago and the company put me up in a cheap and nasty hotel. I was sitting in my room thinking how loud the TV in the next room sounded when suddenly I smelt cigarette smoke. I was trying to work out where it was coming from and then I realised that it was coming round the end of the wall going up to the window. When I say 'going up to the window' I mean just that - I realised that what had probably once been a grand old building with big rooms had been converted into a tatty hotel with small bedrooms by building walls down the middle of the rooms to within about 3 inches of the windows. I could actually put my hand through the gap between the window and the end of the wall into the other room, and when I put my face close to the glass, I could see a reflection of the smoker in the other room, sat on his bed watching TV!

Apart from an obvious fire hazard, the transmission of noise and smells from the room next door, and the total lack of privacy, it was great!

 

[BigonaBianchi]

the uk is expensive for what you get...agree german hotels are better so long as no mention of ze krieg

 

[TVC]

It's the prices I dont get. An average hotel in Aldeburgh, Suffolk wanted 220 quid b&b (street view, not North Sea view), whilst a 4star job with a view of Sydney opera house costs 105.

 

[BigonaBianchi]

The reason brit hotels are so costly is because they all insist on leaving th eheating on turbo boost 24/7 in an attempt to suffocate guests...the heating bill is reflected in the room price.

 

[slowmotion]

...and no, I don't want half a dozen towels and five bottles of liquid gloop in the bathroom (none of which seem to be "fit-for- purpose")... and I can blooming well carry my own bags up to my room because I don't want you hanging around expecting a tip....sod off...