Hotel shame: Worst of the worst 12 years in a row

Imagine being named the worst hotel chain in Britain 12 years in a row.

That's what happened this week to Britannia Hotels.

Every year, consumer choice site Which? undertakes an audit of all of Britain’s major hotel providers.

It asks a panel of customer reviewers to rate each company on eight different criteria, ranging from cleanliness to quality of bathrooms to value for money, then adds in how likely people were to recommend the hotel to give each an overall score out of 100.

The best of the bunch? The Coaching Inn Group 81%; Hotel Indigo 79%, J D Wetherspoon Hotels 76%.

Britannia didn’t get more than two out of five stars in any category, achieving the loathed one-star rating for both cleanliness and bedrooms.

Overall, it had a 44% approval rating, making it the only company to have the majority of customers say they wouldn’t recommend it to a friend Cleanliness and reliability were the two most common complaints; Time Out London reported. 

One person claimed that they found chewing gum stuck in their carpet, and several people noted that their reservations were cancelled at the last minute.

Britannia Hotels is a British budget hotel group with 64 hotels across Great Britain. The company also owns Pontins Holiday Parks. A large cluster of the company's hotels are located in and around Manchester

You can find Which?’s study in full here. The serious message: Do your research before booking at any hotel you have not stayed in before.

Image: Britannia Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool