If you like FOX’s Kitchen Nightmares and Gordon Ramsay, then you will probably enjoy Hotel Hell. I’m not exactly sure what qualifies Ramsay to judge what makes a hotel successful or not other than his willingness to be brutally honest, but the hotels featured in Hotel Hell are so obviously dreadful that I quickly brushed aside any legitimate concerns that I had and just sat down to enjoy the train wreck.
Hotel Hell’s format is simple. Ramsay visits a hotel, critiques everything as he sees glaring errors upon setting foot on the property, eats at the restaurant, visits his room and observes how things are run. He usually canvases the competitors to see if the hotel in question is a good neighbor or not. Then he allows patrons and employees to eviscerate the owner, who always swears that he or she did not know things were so bad or protests that things are fine and the hotel is successful. Then Ramsay renovates the place, retrains the staff and redoes the menu. Sometimes he gets the owner to fire or hire someone. Then we see the owner implement these changes with mixed results, and Ramsay leaves the place better than he found it. There is usually a postscript voiceover that reveals whether or not the owner reverted back to their old ways or kept the changes and whether or not the hotel survived.
I love Hotel Hell because I love watching Ramsay tell people that they are incompetent then give them the tools to be better. I am not into the armchair psychoanalysis at the root of the hotel owner’s dysfunction. I am fascinated when people with no experience, but apparently plenty of savings decide to risk it all to open a hotel then give in to the miasma and despair of incompetence and inexperience. Maybe Ramsay can visit DC and start a reality show called Government Nightmares.