For most people, logging on to the hotel review website tripadvisor.com has become an integral part of their holiday planning. But while it’s easier than ever before for people to vent their spleen at the Basil Fawltys of this world, what about the poor old hoteliers who have to put up with us?

A Facebook group — “You know you’ve worked in hotels, when . . .”, which was set up for hotel employees to dish the dirt on guests, now has more than 70,000 followers and makes interesting reading. “It still amazes me that normal, level-headed, intelligent people seem to become complete and total w*****s the second they walk in the door of a hotel. Why?” asks one poster from Leeds.

We asked some hoteliers to recall their worst experiences — and they weren’t backward in coming forward, despite most wanting to remain anonymous.

There is one story doing the rounds, confirmed by a South American hotelier, about the night a “Scandinavian gent” returned to the boutique hotel a little unsteadily, then pulled his trousers down in front of reception to relieve himself — and we’re talking “No 2” on the list of sins. He then went to his room as if nothing had happened.

“Of course, we were beyond horrified. Luckily, he was checking out the next day. I handed him his bill and said, ‘This extra amount is for cleaning up after you last night.’ He just passed over his credit card and paid up, didn’t say anything, but didn’t look at all embarrassed either.”

While that might be an extreme example, a constant theme is the way people feel they can behave badly just because they are away from home.

“Three Essex pole-dancers booked in for four nights. After just one night their behaviour was unacceptable — very loud, smoking in rooms, wet towels over the antique furniture, and so on,” a B&B landlady from Birmingham told us. “I asked them, in a nice manner, to calm things down and then wondered how I was going to tolerate them for three more nights. When water poured through the ceiling from their bathroom, I took a deep breath and thought, ‘I’ve spoken to them in my language, so now I’ll speak to them in theirs’. In the end, it was ‘Pack your bags and f*** off’ that worked best.”

Perhaps people behave worse in large hotels, hiding behind the anonymity that multiple floors and large numbers of other guests provide. But they forget at their peril the CCTV cameras that lurk in every corridor.

“One of our night managers walked into the main stairwell around three in the morning to find a couple having sex,” said an executive from a well-known chain. “When the manager asked them to go to their room, the gentleman replied they couldn’t as his wife was in there sleeping.”

Sometimes the brazenness of guests can be breathtaking. “Our hotel is about an hour’s drive away from Marbella,” its English owner wrote by e-mail. “A few years ago a guy booked in with an enormous limousine. He was one of those know-it-all types that makes your hackles rise from the moment he arrived. ‘I can tell you how to turn this into a successful place . . .’ Aaarrggh!

“He had been in his room for five minutes when he appeared in reception to ask for two strong guys to help him unload huge boxes from the boot of his limo. I wandered out to watch and found that he had unpacked a complete bar and set it up on his room terrace.

“Then he came to ask for ice — a reasonable request — but he wanted three bucketfuls. Just before dinner, when the bar was filling up with other guests, in waltzes chummy and says in a very loud voice: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention please? Don’t pay these prices — I’ve got a bar on my terrace and I’ll undercut these prices by 25 per cent!’

“We’ve also had guests who took down the curtains to make a bed for their dog.”

And then there’s the just the plain bizarre, as the owner of an historic manor house hotel in Kent explained.

“We had a couple about three years ago who booked in for Valentine’s Day. The next morning they checked out very early via the night porter and said in passing that they had had a bit of an accident with some shoe polish. ‘No problem,’ the porter said, ‘I will get housekeeping to sort out.’

“When housekeeping entered the room, which was a master suite, the whole place was covered in black shoe polish. Up the walls, on the carpets, on the furniture and bed. It was appalling. A silk-covered sofa was ruined and all the bedding had to be replaced, and the carpets.” What started with romance ended in court — and the hotel won.

You would never be one of those people — would you? Because if you are, revenge can be sweet. On a visit to Brazil, a Scottish singer started playing football with some friends in the presidential suite of the five-star Copacabana Hotel in Rio de Janeiro, breaking a picture, leaving marks on the wall and provoking complaints from other guests. The man and his friends were told in no uncertain terms to leave. You can’t get away with that kind of behaviour, even if you are Rod Stewart.

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