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Looks like it made todays paper....
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Toronto takes two spots on ‘dirtiest hotel’ list
But one has closed, and the other is not always so bad
DANIEL DALE, SAN GREWAL AND BRENDAN KENNEDY
STAFF REPORTERS
The nightmare off Elm St. has closed.
So that leaves a sometimes-horror of a Howard Johnson as Toronto’s dirtiest hotel — at least according to an unscientific list released last week by TripAdvisor.
Users of the influential travel website gave the lowest cleanliness marks to the famously unkempt Bay Street Motel, located at the intersection with Elm St., which mercifully shut down in late 2009.
The next Toronto hotel on the Dirtiest Hotels in Canada list, however, is the still-open Howard Johnson Inn and Suites on Metropolitan Rd. in Scarborough, where Sudbury’s Dee Krolick spent mere minutes on Thursday before returning her keys to the front desk in disgust.
“We didn’t even take our coats off,” said Krolick, whose family came to Toronto for a funeral.
“There was a hole in the quilt on the bed, the carpet was all dirt. One of the two beds, when I sat down, the mattress sunk in the middle. The bottom of the chair was all broken. The centre of the bathtub, the bath mat was dirty. The light switch was all dirty. The wallpaper is peeling.”
Star reporters posing as innocent guests checked into the Howard Johnson, ranked the fourth-dirtiest hotel in Canada, and the Arkona Motel in Niagara Falls, ranked the very dirtiest, on Thursday afternoon. Though TripAdvisor reviewers had few kind words for either establishment, our incognito investigators found them acceptable given their prices.
At the Howard Johnson, the carpet, bed and bathroom were clean, furniture and wallpaper in good shape; the $89 room was devoid of smells. At the Arkona, located on the Lundy’s Lane tourist strip, the guest who paid $44.86 including tax found a drab room with a carpet coming up at the edges, two lottery tickets behind the bed, suspicious reddish-brown wall stains in two locations, and 12 holes in the wall where the screws for his headboard used to be. The headboard sat on the ground near the lottery tickets.
But he had paid $44.86 including tax, and the bed, carpet and bathroom were clean.
The Star’s observations may illustrate the shortcomings of lists such as TripAdvisor’s, which was based solely on customer reviews. Guests who have had negative experiences are more likely to post reviews online than guests who find their stays acceptable; travel websites give disproportionate influence to the most vocal of displeased customers. The Arkona’s No. 1 spot, for example, was based on the opinions of fewer than 25 people.
“If 100 families come to us and one of them is unsatisfied, he can write 100 negative comments online,” said Arkona manager Sima Chhina.
Further, the list lumps cheap motels with pricey hotels. And a hotel or motel must be moderately popular with web-savvy visitors to be reviewed by dozens of people: somewhere in Canada, surely, there is a failing motel dirtier than the Arkona.
Still, the owners of hotels and motels take TripAdvisor ratings seriously. TripAdvisor and its affiliated websites boast more than 30 million monthly visitors.
After the Star reporter disclosed his identity to Ron Chan, the general manager of the Howard Johnson, Chan said he was aware of the hotel’s poor ranking. He said he had been on the phone with Howard Johnson’s head office earlier in the day to discuss a path forward.
The hotel is nearly 40 years old, Chan said, and was purchased in 2008 by an owner who lives in China. Chan said renovations on 100 rooms would begin in a month or two, though the other 91 rooms would not be renovated.
“We’ve worked on other things first,” he said, referring to a new ventilation system, a new furnace, and renovations to the now-sparkling washrooms off the main lobby.
Chhina, who has run the Arkona for about four years with her husband Baljid, said the TripAdvisor list was “really sad to see.” She said her motel provides fair value and is regularly booked solid during the summer.
"The basic problem is that if for any reason the customer wants a refund and we don't give it, they get mad and they go comment (on TripAdvisor),” she said.
Chhina also said customers’ expectations can be inflated when they book rooms through travel agents, thus paying higher prices.
"Then they expect a room as good as Howard Johnson. But they're Howard Johnson and we're just Arkona." |
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Short time TA, Long time Guver, Good time giver.
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