History Series / HotelHell

* ReadingsAreOffTheScale: The shower curtain at the Brick Hotel measured a whopping '''5680''' RLU in the sample Gordon took. As noted above, anything over 30 RLU is considered unhealthy. 5680 divided by 30 is '''189.3'''.

* BitchInSheepsClothing: Sarah at the Town's Inn. It initially seems like she's a friend and volunteer, but it turns out that she fancies herself the manager, bossing around the staff and dealing with the decaying hotel walls with painted murals and steel wool to fill holes.

* DownerEnding

** Brian, Kevin & Joel, the three owners of the Murphys Hotel of Murpheys, California. They frequently get wasted at the hotel's bar and drunkenly berate and abuse their staff, and their partying keeps Gordon up all night. [[BerserkButton He takes this about as well as you'd expect.]]

* BerserkButton: Ramsay goes berserk whenever owners of the hotel treat their staff terribly, especially when they blame their failings on their innocent employees.

* AwesomeButImpractical: The stylish Keating Hotel in San Diego is made to evoke Ferrari cars (Eddie, the owner, being a supercar fanboy, hired an automotive designer to decorate the hotel in his requested image.) Too bad the hotel's operations weren't nearly as sleek and smooth as the decor. Case in point: all service calls were routed through the front desk and the restaurant was housed in a separate building down the street. Even the decor was impractical, since rooms often didn't have enough seating or table space to eat ordered food and there were ridiculous layout designs like the bathtub not being in the bathroom. One of the guests even said that the design was "form over function."

* BittersweetEnding: The Cambridge Hotel episode ended with the revelation that the bank foreclosed on the hotel between Gordon's visit and the airing of the episode, despite making a turnaround. The "sweet" part? Gordon Ramsay found a promising 19-year-old named Scooter working in the kitchen to put himself through college, planning to open a bakery when he was done... and decided to pay for Scooter's education himself, on the condition that Scooter send Ramsay a loaf of fresh bread after he opened the bakery.

* DinnerTheatre: The Roosevelt Inn has the FRanchise/SherlockHolmes Murder Mystery Diner. Ramsay criticizes it as a WishFulfillment fantasy for John, who denies it as a sound business decision. Ramsay points out after all that prep work (the majority of it done by John's wife while he "prances about"), they only made about $200 and none of the guests actually stayed to book a room for the night, even ''one'' of which would have made more money than the entire Murder Mystery Diner.

-->'''Gordon:''' "Oh my god. [[SuddenlyShouting How dare you!]] How dare you! How [[PrecisionFStrike fucking]] dare you! 'They don't have to work here.' Oh my god! You disrespectful, disgusting man! 'They don't have to work here.' I don't think you realize how fucking lucky you are! It's not all about you, Robert. Robert's bubble. Robert's world. Robert's dream. You're not the lord of the manor, and you're not Literature/TheGreatGatsby. You're Robert."

** At the Brick Hotel, Ramsay rings a fire alarm to evacuate the place after finding a bacterial reading of 5,680. A segment featuring this in an episode a couple back established that anything over 30 is supposed to be a danger zone on the luminometer that Ramsay uses.

** Gordon ''almost'' does this with the Towns Inn when he sees how filthy it is (via a hygienic scan: 30 is considered clean; his room measured an '''803'''), despite one of the staff begging him to stay. Gordon only stops when he glances into the front office and notices that Karan also lives there. Given that Gordon has a soft spot for mothers and older women, he decides to try one more time with the inn, and is finally successful.

* ReadingsAreOffTheScale: The shower curtain at the Brick Hotel measured a whopping '''5680''' live bacterium in the sample Gordon took. As noted above, anything over 30 is considered unhealthy. 5680 divided by 30 is '''189.3'''.

** At the Brick Hotel, Ramsay rings a fire alarm to evacuate the place after finding a bacterial reading of 5,680. A segment featuring this in an episode a couple back established that anything over 30 is supposed to be a danger zone on the meter that Ramsay uses.

* SmallNameBigEgo: The owner of the Mason de Mesilla was so confident in her (nonexistent) musical ability that she installed ''three stages'' throughout the hotel where she could perform, complete with a sound and speaker system.

* TrashOfTheTitans: In the premier episode, Juniper Hill inn co-owner Robert clearly has a problem with hoarding things. While it could be partially blamed on his background as an antique dealer, Gordon criticized how out-of-place many of the various antiques and knickknacks around the inn clashed with the atmosphere. And that was ''before'' one of the staff revealed the inn's basement and Robert's office was filled with clutter, and then UpToEleven when he shows Gordon at least ''five'' storage containers just choke full of various furniture and the like. Gordon is left incredulous at the sight of easily tens of thousands of dollars worth of items just lying around when Robert can't even afford to pay his own staff.

* YourCostumeNeedsWork: The owner of the Roosevelt Hotel, who has a habit of putting on Franchise/SherlockHolmes-themed nights for guests ([[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext don't ask]]), comments that his British accent is much better than Gordon's...when Gordon is ''from the U.K.''. (Scotland, but still.) Gordon can just [[YouHaveGotToBeKiddingMe stare at him in disbelief]] for a few seconds.

* AdultFear: Two cases.
** Angler's Lodge's owners lost their [[OutlivingOnesOffspring 10-year-old son]] in a tragedy, with the mother becoming despondent and not wanting to work for years because of it.
** Lakeview Hotel is owned by a ChildHater, but he has a reason for it: [[spoiler:his estranged son refuses to let him see his grandchildren]].

** The Keating Hotel's chef, Brian, actually passed out - in front of Ramsay, no less - due to his high anxiety and dehydration.

** [[WhatanIdiot "I thought Gordon would be nice to me!"]]

* ItIsPronouncedTropay: The Monticello Hotel's name is not pronounced "Montichello" (like the historic mansion), but rather "Montisello."

* IAteWhat:
** The Keating Hotel restaurant served a "dessert pizza" made with Nutella, strawberries, and bacon. Cue Ramsay spitting out the one bite he was willing to take.
** Strawberries make another appearance at the Hotel Chester, where the owner's wife puts them on sushi.
---> '''Gordon:''' On behalf of every Japanese chef in America, I'd like to apologize.

* SpoiledBrat: Rina and Vanda from the Calumet Inn. Rina cries and flees everytime and Vanda pesters her staff constantly. Rina even told that they got the hotel because she requested her dad to buy it for her, and she once claimed that "she needed space" and left... ''for three months''. Vanda is not any better, since she always claims that she is a busy hardworker ''while getting up around 3 o'clock and doing useless tasks''.

** Lisa & Jonathan, the owners of the Vienna Inn of Southbridge, Massachusetts didn't even have a payroll system in place for their employees - they had to beg them for a check. In addition, they also made their employees wait on them hand and foot after the restaurant had closed for the night and the customers were gone

* ManChild:

-->'''Gordon:''' "Oh my god. [[SuddenlyShouting How dare you!]] How dare you! How [[PrecisionFStrike fucking]] dare you! 'They don't have to work here.' Oh my god! You disrespectful, disgusting man! 'They don't have to work here.' I don't think you realize how fucking lucky you are! It's not all about you, Robert. Robert's bubble. Robert's world. Robert's dream. You're not the lord of the manor, and you're not the Great Gatsby. You're Robert."

** [[invoked]] Phillip, the owner of the Monticello Hotel, has a serious alcohol problem, and does his damnedest to save a penny, including cutting down on hours for his staff (forcing them to come in early and not even clock in), and putting his own used furniture in the rooms (including [[{{Squick}} mattresses stained with his own semen]]). Luckily, by the end of the episode he's gotten help, checked into rehab, and the hotel's head chef [[RecoveredAddict (himself sober for nine years)]] has offered to be his sponsor.

* ComicallyMissingThePoint: In "The Town's Inn, Part 1," Ramsay discovers that the innkeeper, Karan, is trying to sell off various baskets that she's either made or found, except that he finds that several of them are [[{{Squick}} filled with bugs]].

** The owner of the Keating Hotel essentially ran his hotel [[ThrowItIn by putting in everything]] [[RuleOfCool he thought was cool,]] regardless of whether it made any sense. This is why his entire hotel was designed to look like a Ferrari and also why there were ''150 items'' on the restaurant's menu, despite getting no more than 50 customers a night.

* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: At the Roosevelt Hotel, the owner stages a monthly Franchise/SherlockHolmes-esque mystery dinner, and he and everyone else put on ridiculous English accents that waver between this and OohMeAccentsSlipping. The owner even proclaims that his English accent is better than Ramsay's. Except [[CriticalResearchFailure Ramsay is from Glasgow.]] Granted, his accent is a little less Scottish than most, but still...

** Averted at the Beachfront Inn. The night before the hotel is relaunched, Gordon tells Brian the lackadaisical owner to show up the next day in clothes befitting his position. [[WhatAnIdiot Brian shows up in a polo shirt and cargo shorts.]] Gordon refuses to even speak to him until he's gone back home and changed.

* ReadingsAreOffTheScale: The shower curtain at the Brick Hotel measured a whopping '''5680''' live bacterium in the sample Gordon took. As noted above, anything over 30 is considered unhealthy. 5680÷30='''189.3'''.