Part of Hans Brinker’s advertising campaign.
Brag about your worst hotel experiences and you establish yourself as an intrepid traveller, a courageous citizen of the world.
Amsterdam’s Hans Brinker Budget Hotel is playing up its credentials as the world’s worst accommodation, hoping to attract the brave, the curious and those looking for an impressive traveller’s tale.
Could it really be as bad as the website suggests?
Fairfax Travel (disclosure: they’re sometimes a client for my scribblings) ran this article from the London Telegraph and brought the place to my attention.
As part-time Amsterdam residents we’re often asked for advice about where to stay in the grand old town. I’ll be adding Hans Brinker to the list of establishments to try, at least for novelty value.
The introduction on the website sets the tone:
“The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel has been proudly disappointing travellers for forty years. Boasting levels of comfort comparable to a minimum-security prison, the Hans Brinker also offers some plumbing and an intermittently open canteen serving a wide range of dishes based on runny eggs.”
Hans Brinker (not the proprietor; it’s the name of the boy who stuck his legendary finger in the Dutch dyke) spruiks its eco-friendly credentials – a staircase is an ‘eco-elevator’. A curtain doubles as an ‘eco-towel’.
Every room now has a door.
A stay there will ‘improve your immune system’ by exposing you to a wide variety of bacteria.
Guests’ testimonials give it rave reviews:
“What a fantastic experience. So cheap! So friendly! No, wait, that was that other place in Belgium.”
– Mr and Mrs Vandenberg, New Mexico.
“The best cheap youth hostel I’ve stayed in since my sentence was suspended.”
– Michael, New York.
If you’re looking for affordable, fresh, airy accommodation in Amsterdam, sleep on a park bench. If they’re all taken, try Hans Brinker. If you can’t afford to stay there (and a rusty bed will cost you at least EUR22.50) the website is good for a laugh.
In its nobly honest efforts to reach the bottom of the market, Hans Brinker Hotel is seriously handicapped by its location. It’s in the Kerkstraat, right off the Nieuwe Spiegelstraat, which I was forced to include in my personal list of Amsterdam’s top 10 streets.
It”s hard to believe the world’s worst hotel is just round the corner from this.
Where should we go to find a worse hotel than Hans Brinker? Go on, tell us! Establish some street cred.
Richard Tulloch's LIFE ON THE ROAD 
I have to swallow my throat on this one. Quite something, it isn’t heights, monsters, disaster or anything, but still sounds like a big challenge.
Love the reviews. 😀 Great find, thanks for sharing.
Try Hotel Grenoble Moirans, or rather don’t. Unless you like kicked-in doors, tiny stuffy rooms, noise, no sleep and constant fear someone might break in and murder you during the night. It really was that bad.
And probably not so cheap either, Tracy?
It was quite cheap, c.37 euros a few years ago. I was on a budget but learned my lesson. Clean and safe beats cheap and scary in my book. And they didn’t have a funny website.
Now I have something to share with all my students in Hotel Management, this one is really something. Thanks for sharing.
The lesson is, if you can’t be good, at least be entertaining! Hospitality students take note.
That’s right Richard 🙂
LOL…did you see any bedbugs?
They probably sprinkle a few in there just to keep their reputation intact.
The Park Hotel in Ljubljana is worth checking out – worth checking out of that is!
Thanks Andrew. I knew you’d have some recommendations for this one. Next time I’m passing through Slovenia…I’ll pass.
Funny, about the eco-friendly elevator that never breaks down. Thanks for posting. Shaun Kwong – LNE Elevator Malaysia
Thanks Shaun. I’m glad an elevator expert can see the joke. Of course, if you use the eco-elevator a lot, your knees will require regular servicing!
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Gorgeous. I shall check it put – probably not intrepid enough to stay there. Six years of boarding school has ruined me for further forays into dinginess.
Check it out. Typing on iPad. Hard to type and hard to see haha.