Welcome to the worst hotel in the world
Posted: Tue 19th May 2009 10:28 am
Welcome to the worst hotel in the world
18 May 2009
By Paul Steenhuis
It's hard to disappoint when you advertise yourself as the worst in the business.
Every bed, including those in expensive hotels, have house dust mite. So it's no surprise that a budget hotel should have them. But it's quite a different matter to use enlarged pictures of those house dust mites as a marketing tool for your business. Or pictures of soiled sheets and dog poop on the sidewalk outside ...
The Hans Brinker in Amsterdam has put its shoddy, budget hotel image at the centre of what it calls an 'honest' advertising campaign. A successful one too, because it has been running for ten years. Now, hotel manager Rob Penris and his ad agency KesselsKramer have published a coffee-table book with the best of those ads under the title The Worst Hotel in the World.
Anti-advertising
It has more than two-hundred pages of photos, posters and drawings, and of course images of drunken hotel guests. The hotel's target audience are mostly students and backpackers, who can appreciate the off-beat, sarcastic humour of the Hans Brinker ads - as long as they're not charged more than 25 euros per night.
"Now with beds in every room" or "Now more rooms without a window" are some of the (English-language) slogans used in the Hans Brinker campaign. The book is full of merry - and apparently effective - anti-advertising like this.
The approach has another great advantage: you will never see the Hans Brinker on one of those consumer TV shows where tourists complain about the missing sea view or the cardboard walls in their holiday destination hotels. There is no false advertising here: when you check into the self-professed Worst hotel in the world, you can't complain about it later.
In fact, most hotel guests are pleasantly surprised when they arrive at the hotel. It is hard to disappoint when you've diminished expectations to less than nothing. A brief visit to the Hans Brinker hotel revealed a run-of-the-mill budget hotel, with a spacious red bar and clean bathrooms.
'Eco-friendly'
KesselsKramer's campaign also cleverly taps into social trends. Research has shown that obsessive cleanliness actually diminishes the human immune system - man, apparently, needs a bit of dirt in order to survive. So naturally the Brinker campaign has focused on the benefits of its supposed dirtiness, with pictures of bed bugs and old trash swiped under carpets accompanied by the headline: "Improve your immune system, come stay at Hans Brinker".
The ecological trend has also proved inspirational. The hotel's complete lack of elevators becomes an "eco-friendly elevator" - the stairs. No hot water in the shower? Environmentally sound water consumption. No towels? Drying yourself off with the curtains will save on washing and help save the planet.
Cute, but an utter lie: when I visited the Hans Brinker last week the corridors were full of trolleys loaded with fresh towels. And the hotel actually provides some services that five-star hotels don't. If you plan to get very drunk, you can ask to have your arm stamped with a map showing the location of the hotel and the words: "Please return me to the Hans Brinker." Talk about service!
www.hans-brinker.com
Source
18 May 2009
By Paul Steenhuis
It's hard to disappoint when you advertise yourself as the worst in the business.
Every bed, including those in expensive hotels, have house dust mite. So it's no surprise that a budget hotel should have them. But it's quite a different matter to use enlarged pictures of those house dust mites as a marketing tool for your business. Or pictures of soiled sheets and dog poop on the sidewalk outside ...
The Hans Brinker in Amsterdam has put its shoddy, budget hotel image at the centre of what it calls an 'honest' advertising campaign. A successful one too, because it has been running for ten years. Now, hotel manager Rob Penris and his ad agency KesselsKramer have published a coffee-table book with the best of those ads under the title The Worst Hotel in the World.
Anti-advertising
It has more than two-hundred pages of photos, posters and drawings, and of course images of drunken hotel guests. The hotel's target audience are mostly students and backpackers, who can appreciate the off-beat, sarcastic humour of the Hans Brinker ads - as long as they're not charged more than 25 euros per night.
"Now with beds in every room" or "Now more rooms without a window" are some of the (English-language) slogans used in the Hans Brinker campaign. The book is full of merry - and apparently effective - anti-advertising like this.
The approach has another great advantage: you will never see the Hans Brinker on one of those consumer TV shows where tourists complain about the missing sea view or the cardboard walls in their holiday destination hotels. There is no false advertising here: when you check into the self-professed Worst hotel in the world, you can't complain about it later.
In fact, most hotel guests are pleasantly surprised when they arrive at the hotel. It is hard to disappoint when you've diminished expectations to less than nothing. A brief visit to the Hans Brinker hotel revealed a run-of-the-mill budget hotel, with a spacious red bar and clean bathrooms.
'Eco-friendly'
KesselsKramer's campaign also cleverly taps into social trends. Research has shown that obsessive cleanliness actually diminishes the human immune system - man, apparently, needs a bit of dirt in order to survive. So naturally the Brinker campaign has focused on the benefits of its supposed dirtiness, with pictures of bed bugs and old trash swiped under carpets accompanied by the headline: "Improve your immune system, come stay at Hans Brinker".
The ecological trend has also proved inspirational. The hotel's complete lack of elevators becomes an "eco-friendly elevator" - the stairs. No hot water in the shower? Environmentally sound water consumption. No towels? Drying yourself off with the curtains will save on washing and help save the planet.
Cute, but an utter lie: when I visited the Hans Brinker last week the corridors were full of trolleys loaded with fresh towels. And the hotel actually provides some services that five-star hotels don't. If you plan to get very drunk, you can ask to have your arm stamped with a map showing the location of the hotel and the words: "Please return me to the Hans Brinker." Talk about service!
www.hans-brinker.com
Source
since they have rats roachs drunken english footfans...only problem here was the staff keap tell us no to smoke in room and go smoke our drugs outside « DIDNT STOP US ! Till this woman keep rushing in our room saying next time im calling the police.... didnt stop us « 10 min later im tellng friend who has just walked inthe room ... he sparks a joint up...2 min later same woman rushed in wit OWNER 
He was so cool wit us.. he rolled a joint an spark it up in the room and told us was okay just try not too smoking in room during the day..then invited us (me and 2 friend) for a drink and joint a Dolphins!!