Plenty of filthy and disgusting hotels have been profiled on Gordon Ramsay’s Hotel Hell, but none are filthier than the Town’s Inn.
It is pretty par for the course for the establishments featured on Gordon Ramsay’s Hotel Hell to have a few questionable décor items, a few stains on the carpet, or even bland cooked-from-frozen food. But there are a handful of Hotel Hell hotels which were just downright filthy.
It might be difficult to believe that anything could top Landoll’s Mohican Castle’s rooms filled with dead flies, Angler’s Lodge’s blood-stained sheets, and the Lakeview Hotel’s dusty rafters.
But there is one hotel, or rather, an inn, which had Ramsay absolutely flabbergasted with its filth.
And the award goes to…
This, of course, was the Town’s Inn (which was profiled in a special double-episode in 2016).
Though the owner of the Town’s Inn, Karan Townsend, will go down in history as one of the show’s most eccentric owners, her charms were just not enough to hide how disgusting this inn truly was.
Not only did Ramsay’s at-home bacteria test kit reveal that this room and the communal bathroom contained over 20 percent more bacteria than what was safe, but the inn’s staff members were also quick to reveal that Karan had had an ‘accident’ on the bathroom’s floor.
Considering all of this combined with the inn’s dusty baskets and hats, there is simply no denying that this is the absolute filthiest establishment ever featured on Hotel Hell.
Hotel Hell’s most disgusting hotels – honorable mentions
While Town’s Inn still holds the top spot for Hotel Hell’s dirtiest hotel, there are a few other establishments from the series that we cannot neglect to mention.
Our ranking of Hotel Hell’s top 5 dirtiest, most disgusting hotels plays out as follows:
| Rank | Hotel Hell hotel | Hotel Hell Episode |
| 5 | River Rock Inn | Season 1, episode 5 |
| 4 | Angler’s Lodge | Season 3, episode 1 |
| 3 | Landoll’s Mohican Castle | Season 3, episode 8 |
| 2 | Lakeview Hotel | Season 3, episode 5 |
| 1 | Town’s Inn | Season 3, episodes 3 and 4 |
Karan Townsend has spoken out publically against the show
Town’s Inn has become one of Hotel Hell’s biggest success stories, but it turns out that Townsend was not happy at all about her business’s Hotel Hell transformation.
Townsend spoke to The Journal in 2017 and confessed that she felt like she was left “to flounder” by the show.
According to Townsend, “Everything was not helpful. We really tried to do the Ramsay menu that November, but it wasn’t working well.”
To make matters worse, Townsend also had trouble consolidating her bills and mail after the celebrity chef helped her to move out of the inn, which resulted in “constantly driving back-and-forth” during business hours.
And it seems like she continued to feel this way after the dust had settled. One 2018 response from this owner and innkeeper on TripAdvisor reads “All i’ll say is that i’m 69 years old & have never met anyone whom i dislike and disrespect more than Gordan Ramsay. His suggestions & actions were inappropriate & costly.”
The Town’s Inn today
In perhaps the most surprising turn of events in the entire Hotel Hell franchise, Town’s Inn has remained open and is still operational to this day, despite its rather unflattering appearance on television all those years ago.
According to the Town’s Inn website, the inn’s rooms currently range between about $80 and about $200 per night.
It seems like the inn still mostly caters to bikers and hikers who find themselves needing a place to stay in Harpers Ferry, but the inn markets itself as being open to “A diverse clientele of local residents & visitors”.
It seems like Town’s Inn has cleaned up its act
Although Townsend may not have found much use for Ramsay’s restorations or new menu, it seems like she may have taken his comments about the hotel’s cleanliness to heart.
Town’s Inn currently has a great 4 out of 5-star average rating on TripAdvisor (from over 300 reviews).
And while these reviewers seem to be in agreement that Town’s Inn is a quirky and unusual stay, they do not mention the inn being filthy.
The most recent review from October 2023 mentions that the downstairs bath is “pretty tiny, but very clean” and a different review from August 2023 reads, “our room was immaculate and the staff were friendly and helpful”.
The reviews on Yelp, on which Town’s Inn has maintained a fair 3.4 out of 5 stars, seem to agree. One review from June 2023 stated “There are amenities galore, shelves of clean towels, and even bathrobes in some of the rooms”.
