Review of Five's The Hotel Inspector

Episode 1 of the Fifth Series of the Renovation Show

Jul 7, 2009

Series five of The Hotel Inspector starts by going to The Crown Inn at Lewes by cleaning up and adding a lick of paint but is not very interesting.

“Disgusting” and “yuck” appear to be hotelier Alex Polizzi’s favourite words if the first episode of the new series of Five’s renovation documentary thing is anything to base an opinion on. As the titular host for The Hotel Inspector her job is to help failing guest houses regain business through a change of management style and a lick of paint. That and she has a strange obsession with pointing at public hair left about the rooms.

The Hotel Inspector is Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares on a larger scale but instead of a craggy faced swearing Scotsman ranting about the place saying everything being the worst he has ever seen in that Simon Cowell way, it has an uptight, prim-and-proper lady with few redeeming qualities. However, she got in on the act early on describing the destination of choice, The Crown Inn at Lewes, as one of the worst places she had ever been to. And one suspects the same will be said again next week.

The Crown Inn is owned by former care assistant Karen Lloyd who invested her life savings into opening it two years ago. All was apparently going well until a number of bad internet reviews (damn these people) turned up complaining about paying £70 a night to sleep in filth and Karen started losing money. If that wasn’t bad enough the hotel was stripped of one of its three stars by the tourist board Visit England. What better way to solve the problem than be shamed on national TV?

Programmes like this exist solely for the “expert” to stride about the place and constantly bleat on about why they are right about everything. Polizzi has the pedigree in this area and knows what she’s talking about, she could just convey herself better. Then again Karen was impossible to sympathise with given her flippant nature and refusal to accept blame for the terrible conditions and poor manner.

There was also a sequence where Karen was sent to The Grand Hotel in Eastbourne to learn how to provide good service. This made no sense other than giving a five minute advert for an establishment that doesn’t need the attention. Going down the road to the nearest successful 3-star hotel would have been more fitting considering Karen’s aspirations of gaining her status back. But ultimately she was awarded her stars and even got praise from some of those pesky internet reviewers when they were invited to return.

Gordon Ramsey has a horrible way of addressing people but at least his shows are funny and have a morbid entertaining quality to them. He even thinks of preposterous character building tasks and has the occasional natter with the workers for good measure. Strangely in this episode despite the staff being described very frequently by their boss as being incompetent they were unseen, except for the cleaner. Maybe they decided to keep their dignity and stay off screen.

All that happens in The Hotel Inspector is that a surly posh woman peers into a bathroom and says “eww”, “oh my god” and “yucky” for about an hour. In this current form it’s not very good and even though the voiceovers are done by that guy from The Apprentice its not on the same level of insight or enjoyment. But as Karen says: “I think people who write reviews on internets (sic) have got a very sad life anyway”. Touché.

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