The things I hate most about tour group hotels are (in order);
1) The bloody awful rooms you get. They always give the worst rooms to people who book packages. Why do they have such varying levels of cleanliness, quality and even size within what they claim to be the same category of room?
2) The bloody awful food and service that you get. So called luxury hotels with self service buffet breakfasts including those grotty "links" sausages clearly made out of the least savory parts of whatever animal they put in them, orange juice is that is only orange in colour and coffee / tea that goes in weaker than it comes out.
3) Bloody German and Austrian package tourists who get up early to reserve certain loungers with their towels, then shower, then go to breakfast, then go back to their room for whatever purpose and then finally turn up at the pool at 11am before leaving it (still reserved) at noon for a long lunch.
4) Bloody Japanese and Chinese package tourists who take photos of everyone and everything including the toilet to the point they do not know where they have been until they get home and have their pictures developed. Smoking and drinking scotch (yes they do) at the breakfast table and leering at everything in a skirt.
5) Stupid unenforceable rules like "corkage" on drinks you bring back to your room because the beer in the badly operating minibar costs 10 times what is does in the local shop.
6) A petulance for the insipid and generic cultural shows with as much authenticity (in the context of things) as a MacDonalds.

It never ceases to amaze me how hotels pander to this ridiculous star system claiming to be this number of stars or that in order to try and profess quality levels. The hotel star rating system has NOTHING to do with the quality of a hotel, it is a simple check list of facilities which do not even have to work in order to be ticked. I have stayed at many 3 star hotels who tell me they deliberately engineered their star rating survey in order to avoid paying the higher tax levels levied on a 4 or 5 star hotel, so more of what you pay one of these accommodation marketing crocks is tax! I have stayed at 5 star hotels that are as about as luxurious and comfortable as an Indian fakir’s bed. If a hotel’s first line of marketing is “We are 5 star” RUN, it is an overpriced tour group hotel!

Thank you.
Yeah

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Agree with alot of Mark's comments but my three top hates are:

1. People smoking in restaurants especially at breakfast time. Eventhough I am a smoker I have never smoked in restaurants I always walk outside to light up.

2. Sun lounge hogs - hate these people to the max. But the hotels condone this I don't know why. Once I was very angry and picked up fresh towels off a sun lounger that had been there all day and not used and I threw them in the pool - staff were not too happy but tough!!!

3. Drunken Aussies who think they rule the place. I am an aussie and I am ashamed of how some of my fellow country men/woman act in Bali with a gut full of booze.

Cheers Larry

Rant
I know exactly what you mean with the sunbeds. It is so stereo typical but true, and more so of a certain nationallity.

The amount of people who smoke and keep the smoke away from their companion just to blow it in to your face is unbelieveable.

Kids running riot whilst the parents are not there screaming and jumping in the pools. the same in good places to eat. You are paying a fortune to listen to someones darling scream the night away.

Really loud music round pools or on the beach.

Bloody bat and balls on the beach, why oh why oh why do they do that ?

Dawdlers who walk along the pavements and then just stop suddenly to look at something causing a pile up.

People on planes who put their seats straight back on a 1 hour flight during the day.

Ignorant people of any sort, people who disrespect the culture.

Vendors with iguanas and gibbons trying to get you to pay for photos.

Old men with young Thai girls who would not be out of place as their Granddaughters. Smacks of phaeodophillia (sp)

People in thongs who really should not be showing all their arse.

Being ripped off.

Long hair being swished about in places where you eat.

Oh I could go on I am such a miserable Censored

That enough, I am all wound up now and ready to rip off some towels off sun beds.

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Kiss
God laughs at people who make plans.

If you stay in cheap beach huts you don't get all these aggravating problems Mark! No pool or sun loungers, self service breakfast buffets, corkage rules or....package tourists! Personally I think a stunning natural unspoilt beach is far more of a rare luxury than concrete buildings, whatever their star rating. I'm more than willing to put up with cold water showers and no A/C for a package- tourist-free beach like this.... especially when I'm paying under $10 US a night to stay there!

I know that Fio. I am amazed that mass tourism brochure loving tourists somehow think 5 star and high prices = luxury / to die for!

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Oh that beach Fio. Tell me where??

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Kiss
God laughs at people who make plans.

It's on an island called Boilangga in the Togean Islands in Indonesia (Sulawesi) not Thailand. I stayed on a neighbouring island at Fadhila Cottages. Fadhila Cottages, Togean, Sulawesi

Not very easy to get to so I doubt if it will be invaded by mass tourism in the foreseeable future!

A request to anyone who does go to Fadhila cottages .... take medicines with you to give to the owner for redistribution to the local villagers. They have no doctor or pharmacy there and it's twelve hours from mainland Sulawesi (only one boat a week). They are short of everything, even aspirin but they particularly need antibiotics and antimalarials ....especially meds with dosages suitable for children and babies.

Thanks - beautiful.

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Kiss
God laughs at people who make plans.

Yikes...now I'm getting worried that the hotel I've chosen for my upcoming Bali trip is going to be the way you've described here! I did read that it is used by some travel agents to place groups, and that it is popular with German and Austrian tourists.

Can anyone tell me if the Resor Seminyak has the qualities described in this thread? If so, I'll quickly change my reservations to some place else!

By the way, I have a strong aversion to chair hogs. I personally have my own tactic for dealing with them. If I see a chair that hasn't had a human form in it for more than an hour or so, I'll simply remove the belongings on it to some place nearby, move the chair a bit away, and if/when the chair hog returns to confront me, claim that I have no idea what they are talking about. I've done this on several occasions (both at land resorts and on cruise ships), and most of the time they don't bother to confront me. The few times they have, nobody nearby said a word, even though many of them had seen me remove their stuff! Eventually the chair hogs slink away. ;)

LeeAnne