I’m generally not super picky about the hotels that I stay in. I’ve stayed in a few five star hotels, but I generally tend to save my points for other things. All that means that I’ve stayed in some…. interesting hotels over the years.
(SEE ALSO: Okay – I stayed at a Rodeway Inn (and lived to tell the tale!))
(SEE ALSO: What’s the worst hotel you’ve ever stayed at?)
Recently though I stayed at the Country Inn and Suites in Charlotte and the pillows were…. really bad.
Budget hotels
The hotel itself was fine. The hotel airport shuttle was on-time though full – we shared it with a heavy metal band that was on their way back home after touring for 2 weeks in Mexico (no, really). There actually are quite a variety of low-end hotels near the Charlotte airport – there’s a Category 1 Hyatt House and TWO Hyatt Places. I’ve actually stayed at the Hyatt House before and had one of my best stays ever
(SEE ALSO: Finally stayed at my first 5-star hotel!)
Originally I had that booked, but then I realized that my Club Carlson points were about to expire, so I figured I’d spend 15,000 points to book it, save my Hyatt points AND keep my Club Carlson points from expiring. The cash rates were pretty cheap, but I figured I’d save my cash or cash points, since I’m not likely to have any better use of Club Carlson points
I wasn’t planning on doing a full review because it was pretty much the same as any other Country Inn and Suites, and I’ve learned that people generally don’t care much about reviews of low-end hotels.
The world’s worst hotel pillows
But then… we went to go to sleep and found the world’s worst hotel pillows.
Not only were they super flat, to the point that it was barely like having a pillow at all, but there were only 4 of them (for a double bed)
I do prefer to have a few extra pillows (especially since these ones were so bad!), so I called down to the front desk, where I was told that they “don’t have any extra pillows”. Good times…
I slept okay, though it didn’t help that the room phone randomly rang at like 4 in the morning for some reason.
Other Of The Worst Hotel Pillows
On another recent trip, I was in Japan. I stayed at two different hotels during my trip – the Osaka Hotel Universal Port Vita (near Universal Studios Japan) and the Comfort Hotel Tokyo Kiyosumi Shirakawa. As one commenter mentioned, hotel pillows in Japan are some of the worst hotel pillows in the world, at least in terms of what many Americans are expecting. At the Comfort Hotel Tokyo Kiyosumi Shirakawa, there was one, extremely flat, pillow.
Thankfully we were so exhausted after our day in Tokyo that I managed to fall right asleep without problem.
The Bottom Line
One of the things I look for most in any hotel that I’m at is the number and quality of the hotel pillows. I’ve stayed in a few hotels recently that have had some of the worst hotel pillows in the world. What’s even more annoying is when they say there “aren’t any more” at the front desk, so you’re stuck with a small number of poor quality hotel pillows.
What do you look for in a hotel bed pillow and do you remember where the worst hotel pillows you ever had were? Leave a note in the comments
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Lol those don’t even look that bad. The worst ones are in Asia. Especially in mainland China. Usually at the more budget style hotels. On the bottom of these pillows there will be a rectanglar packet of circular pellets. I don’t really know what they are for? i assume to soak up moisture. Gross. They are usually flat and they don’t really fold in half because they are so hard.
The square(ish) ones. They’re terrible.
A hotel pillow better allow my head to fall into it and basically envelop it.
A king size bed should have a king size pillow not one the size of a postage stamp. The new Residence Inn in Littleton, Colorado had great pillows. What good is a great bed if it has a lousy pillow?