This Is the World’s Worst Hotel Chain

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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This Is the World’s Worst Hotel Chain

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Domestic travel was crippled by the COVID-19 pandemic. For a time, traffic for airlines, hotels and cruises nearly disappeared. Some companies needed government assistance to stay afloat. International travel was hurt even more, as countries blocked visitors from outside their borders. Most of these restrictions, both international and domestic, have been lifted. However, as the virus continues to spread, the industry will never be the same again.

As people do start to travel, another industry has recovered. A number of media and travel booking services rate hotels, airlines and hotels. Some of these ratings are based on customers reviews. Others are based on the opinion of travel experts. Presumably, these reviews matter in terms of how people travel and where they stay.

The Hotel Chain Index from small business travel website Bounce asks this question: “Staying in a relaxing and luxurious hotel can make all the difference between a good vacation and a great one. Popular hotel chains like Hilton and Marriott can be found in world-class cities across the globe, but which is the best hotel brand to stay at?”

The data included hotel review scores, the number of Google searches, the number of countries where a chain was located, the number of available hotel locations and the annual revenue of the parent company. Information to support these metrics was pulled from BestCompany, Facebook, Trustpilot, Google Keyword Planner, Wikipedia, ZoomInfo, DNB and Five Star Alliance.
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The maximum score a hotel chain could receive is 5. The “least successful” hotel chain, that is the one that received the lowest score (2.0), was Park Plaza Hotels. The next worst was budget hotel operator Econo Lodge with a rating of 2.17.

Park Plaza Hotels is owned by the Radisson Hotel Group. Radisson is among the world’s largest hotel umbrella companies and controls about 1,400 hotels worldwide.

These are the 10 worst hotels in the world:

Chain Rating Countries Locations
Park Plaza Hotels 2.00 7 35
Econo Lodge 2.17 2 779
Raffles Hotels 3.25 15 21
Hampton by Hilton 3.67 36 2,833
Ramada 3.67 75 919
Embassy Suites 4.08 4 266
La Quinta 4.17 10 928
Fairmont Hotels 4.58 31 82
Wyndham Hotels 4.58 33 156
Days Inn 4.92 21 1,551

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Click here to see which is the best country for tourist road trips.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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