I have a really strict criteria when it comes to hotels. Since they’re not cheap, when the rare opportunity arises for me to stay in one, it absolutely has to be one of two things:

A little bit quirky

OR

Have lots of terrible reviews

I know it might seem like I’ve made a typo in the latter, but I mean every word. Unless I’m travelling with friends or family – when I’ll comply with more ‘normal’ choices – I’ll always choose budget and character, over nice, but expensive and boring.

I haven’t always felt this way, but then in 2017 I needed to book into a hotel opposite the train station in Stoke on Trent, and it changed everything. Say what you will about cleanliness and quality (neither of which that hotel particularly had), but I’ve never stayed in a hotel I’ve spoken about more. I can’t even remember most of the others. My stay at the North Stafford Hotel prompted much laughter, and conjured bizarre stories and anecdotes in abundance.

It also gave birth to a dream of visiting terribly rated hotels all over the country and writing a book about them, but I never pursued that dream due to both time and financial constraints. Now, a vast number of writers and YouTubers have beaten me to it, and probably do it better than I could anyway.

But there’s always been one hotel here in Kent that’s been on my list of places to experience before I die. Maybe it would be in poor taste to name it, so let’s just say I’ve been burstin to go ever since I found out it earned the grand title of the ‘UK’s worst hotel’. For several years running. Perfect.

I finally got to tick this item off my bucket list (no, not ‘sick bucket’!) in April 2025, when a Folkestone-based friend was having some birthday drinks. I could have found a way to get home that evening if I’d tried to, but I didn’t try. At all, in fact.

It was time.

After a delicious lunch on the Harbour Arm and an hour reading my book on the dreamy seafront, I finally make my way to the hotel to check-in. The automatic door opens, so already my expectations have been exceeded.

“I like your green shoes, love!”

The group of men in the lobby start laughing. Maybe I should be offended, but I’m not. I’m too excited to be fulfilling a dream, and am eager to check-in. The service is friendly, professional, and hassle-free, and this would be the case in every encounter with staff during my stay. Before heading to my room, I take a little tour of the building. It’s everything I hoped it would be. Hypnotic carpets. Worn leather seats. Yellowing ceilings. I feel like I can still smell the many B&H’s that would have been smoked in these rooms in the 1980s, and strangely, I don’t actually dislike that fact.

The whole place brings back memories of some of the best nights out in my life. Only those who attended Lancaster University before 2010 will understand it when I say this is like Morecambe’s Premier Venue – the Carleton (R.I.P) – but for those who didn’t, the Carleton was basically like this, but with stickier floors, cheesy music, and people throwing up everywhere (not always me) after one too many of the venue’s signature cocktails, named ‘stiff’uns‘. Maybe that’s what happens to this place at night, too. That’s something I’ll have to find out next time.

I head to my room and elect to take the stairs over the elevator, on account of only being on the first floor. Room 151. If this was the North Stafford Hotel – which incidentally belongs to the same chain as this one – Room 151 would probably be between rooms 312 and 543 on floor 7, but here, the numbers do seem to run in a logical order. On my floor, at least.

Room 151 is in the very regal sounding ‘C Wing‘, although some odd kerning on the signage makes it read more like ‘C WIN G’. To get to C WIN G I must walk down a very long corridor. A very long corridor.  One which I’m not sure even has an actual ending, and quite possibly doesn’t. I walk along and am enveloped by a smell that evokes memories of visiting my much missed grandmother in her care home shortly before she passed away. It’s both a comfort and a discomfort and it leads me to ruminate, but I’m quickly detracted by a piece of paper stuck to a door on which a note has been scrawled and highlighted with a blue Stabilo marker pen:

“KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING PLEASE“

I make a mental note to keep my door locked, and wonder what sort of commotion has been ensuing along this very long corridor recently.

I enter my room, and am pleasantly surprised. The reviews and articles I’d read had evoked visions of walking into some sort of bog with bricks for beds and stained underwear for curtains. Instead, I walk into a light, bright space which upon first inspection seems clean and tidy, although the artwork is a little terrifying:

My room is – unfortunately – on the wrong side of the building for a sea view. Instead, I am proffered stunning views of the car park, and the Sunshine Bar and Grill over the road. Still, it’s better than the view of vents and discarded Styrofoam containers I had at the North Stafford. Another thing I have here, which the North Stafford didn’t offer, is a full on ironing board and iron. Just in case I fancy straightening out any creases in my luggage whilst absorbing the beautiful panoramic:

I make myself a coffee and notice what appears to be Pot Noodle dust peppered around the spout of the kettle, but it’s nothing a little wipe can’t fix.

I’d been hoping to use my time pre-party to check out the sauna, but the swimming facilities were closed due to staff sickness, so I decide to have a bath instead. It’s during this initial venture into the bathroom that I discover the previous occupant has failed to flush the loo (I wonder if they had been burstin, and just forgotten to flush in the wake of overwhelming relief), and there is no sign that there has ever been any shower gel in the shower gel receptacle. I draw a bath anyway, and become perplexed at how the bath tap seems to activate the sink tap too. Multitasking! The running water alternates between trickles and full on downpours, but we get there eventually.

Bathed up and dressed, I decide to head down to the bar area for a coffee. And to be honest, it’s all absolutely fine. It’s busy – proving that even in spite of the reputation, the hotel remains popular – and I appreciate the range of dialects I can overhear. Scottish. Irish. American. I’m proud to live in a county so attractive to tourists. It makes me feel like I’m on holiday, too.

I choose the comfiest looking piece of worn furniture and am shortly joined by a noisy group next to me, where one lady in particular is enjoying herself and appears to be a little inebriated. She starts to empty the contents of her handbag all over the table. One of the items is some lipbalm:

“Sharon’s never seen me without my Carmex, and we’ve been friends for 20 years!“

She then cackles out an incredibly loud innuendo about the lipbalm that’s too filthy to put into print, and people turn to look for from whom that exclamation came from. She doesn’t care, she’s enjoying her own joke too much, and I actually quite admire the hubris. Good for her, I think to myself.

Coffee consumed, I decide to venture out in the sunshine to grab a sweet snack and test my theory that everybody always looks deadly serious when eating ice cream cones. I return a few pounds heavier, having witnessed no challenges to my hypothesis.

Back in my room, I make a phone-call, and whilst gazing ahead notice what appears to be a blob of snot affixed to the wall. Of everything I’ve experienced in this hotel so far, this is the one thing that crosses a line, and makes me physically gag. I reassure myself I’m only here for one night, and by the time I return from the party it’ll be hopefully too dark to see it. Or not. It’s pretty fudging massive, like it came out of the nostril of a hippo, or some other megafauna. It’ll probably even illuminate the room overnight with its green glow, I guess I’ll find out later.

A short while later my ‘neighbours’ arrive. I don’t see them, but I can definitely hear them:

“No, please don’t, you’ll set off the alarm. You’ll set off the alarm. YOU’LL SET OFF THE ALARM!”

“Oh, alright then, I won’t!”

Phew.

I then hear them comment on their impressions of their room. They, too, are in awe of the ironing board. They also rate the beds, and have an early start in the morning. A sheet of toilet paper dividing the rooms – like the one I found in the loo perhaps – would provide more sound insulation than the existing walls, I’m sure.

***************************************

I return from my evening out around 11.30pm and walk over a pile of crushed tortilla crisps that have integrated into the hypnotic carpet. No salsa. The bar is busy and full of life, and accents from all over the world. I love it. It feels like the entire planet has compressed itself into this little tatty cruise ship shaped building in East Kent, frozen in time since the ’80s. The nautical theme also makes it feel like the cross-channel ferries I used to take with my grandparents around the same time, watching the ashes from Nan’s fag drip down into an aluminium ashtray whilst nibbling on a Toblerone too big for my infant-sized mouth.

Back in the present, I hear only laughter, people conversing with strangers, others burstin into song, and the likes of ‘Time of my Life’ emanating from the ballroom. I see people smiling and enjoying themselves within the craziness of it all. I hear an American comment that life is not about money, but community, having fun, and eating tasty food. Last night, he ate the best prawns he’d ever had in his life. He “even took a photo.” I love him.

If this hotel is ‘bad’, then I’m not sure I really care about ‘good’.

Character over perfection, every single time. I’m burstin to tell you, that places like these are so much better than you think they’ll be, and they will almost always make you smile, and even laugh a bit. They’ll also save you a fair amount of money, so you can afford to come back again.

Now there’s an idea…