World’s Worst Hotel

  The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel in Amsterdam has won the travel agents’ award again as the world’s worst hotel. A typical comment from the Tripadvisor website:

We stayed in this hostel in April 2012 on a Topdeck tour of Europe. I'd read other reviews of the hostel before we got there, so was a bit nervous. Unfortunately most of the reviews I'd read were completely true. The rooms were like prison cells, with rickety old beds and metal lockers that didn't close properly. Walking down the hallways was like walking through an abandoned old hospital. I could have forgiven the barren, echoing rooms if they'd been super clean, but they weren't. The shared bathroom was the kind that you wear thongs in just to wash your hands. Luckily the bed sheets were clean (or so they looked). The breakfast was minimal and gross. The only saving factor was that it was within walking distance to the main tourist attractions in Amsterdam, very close to a bike hire store and down the street from a cafe that makes potent brownies. I would recommend that, if you have a choice, go somewhere else!

        Room Tip: Choose a good room...at another hostel!

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If you check their website, you’ll find the following legal notice posted.

Legal note: The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel does offer cheap accommodation in Amsterdam but cheap accommodation herein describes ‘inexpensive relative to others in the sector’ but not (under hotel regulations & guides the Netherlands brief #4569. 67887. 89) ‘good’ accommodation or indeed ‘pleasant,’ ‘hygienic’ accommodation or any derivation thereof. Those wishing to stay at the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel, Amsterdam, do so at their own risk and will not hold the hotel liable for food poisoning, mental breakdowns, terminal illness, lost limbs, radiation poisoning, certain diseases associated with the 18th century, plague, etcetera.

Why go? It does provide relatively cheap accommodation close to some well known tourist attractions in the city and the clientele mostly stoned on legal pot after a night of debauchery in Amsterdam’s red light zone usually don’t notice the lack of amenities. Also if I get a thousand hits on this post then the hotel will pay me ten Euros (really!)

P.S.

The hotel was named after a character in a novel by American author Mary Mapes Dodge entitled, “The Silver Skates” who wants to win a prize of silver skates by winning the Dutch speed racing  competition but only owns a pair of wooden skates.