Exclusive Feature: A quick glance into the most current Travel Law Judgements shows quite instructive commandments how to name and how not to name your hotel.

A look into the most current Travel Law Judgements shows quite instructive commandments how to name and how not to name your hotel. You already know about? Sure. But you definetely do not know what strange – and funny – names some hotel managers develop to fool their customers.

Imagine your "express" train is stopping at every station of the line – might this not be at least one reason to complain? Exactly – and therefore always on anything should be written, what is really inside. Thus not only mini-bars (see our last post) are meant, or Hamburgers or travel blogs, but also figurative as for example the name of a hotel.

Hotel names, for this wisdom you will need no MA in business marketing, are an important tool for advertising. This has reached even the awareness of the Dutch budget hotel Hans Brinker based in the centre of Amsterdam. Although it has a relatively meaningless name, but the subtitle is on the contrary even more meaningful: "The worst hotel in the world".

This is illustrated for decades now by a cheeky poster campaign that shows filthy bed linen, bed bugs in close-up, deranged hotel guests and other atrocities. With confidence: the images are lovingly arranged by an advertising agency of course, all are constructed.

In reality, the Hans Brinker is a clean, well-maintained property that takes young people for unbeatable 28 Dollars per night (by the way the bad hostel has an average occupancy by more than 80%). Much of nowadays claims seem to be only ironic.

Vice versa so drastic marketing does not work at all: "Park Hotel" must actually be situated in a quiet region in the recreation facilities are within easy reach. Parking sites alone are – strange enought – not enough. Then the Park Hotel is a naked Hotel again – the Park was taken away, a high court in Germany ruled recently. Wrong parking, one might think. And this happens often.

A hotelier in Egypt for example had to learn recently that his "idyllic" Property was not so inspiring for everyone as it seems to be, as he it may have thought for the texts of the advertising folders: a European package tourists looking at a desolate gas station was not feeling idyllic enough, so he complained.

The Court concluded its opinion, 40% of the fare was the not at all idyllic repay the Organizer. Still more explosive it turns out, if a hotel advertises with stars, which correctly stick on the facade, but were never granted by any of the many worldwide tourism and accomodation industry members.

But there are still a number of black sheep: in one case a house in Asia had called himself "Holiday Inn", although there was no cooperation with the international chain. Bad luck and ruined holidays for the tour operator, because 25% of the accommodation costs, he had to repay to the customer.

Forgers go less risk if they use only one aspect of this: so is a hotel "All seasons" despite 20 kilometres away from the city centre a "city hotel", a few baths make the accommodation to transform into "Wellness" Hotel moreover and the waters on the large photo wallpaper in the lobby maybe inspired from hotel to the "Lakeside". Perhaps this was ironic as well...

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Roland Wildberg is Travel Writer and Correspondent based in Berlin, Germany. He started as an Editor for the National daily 'Die Welt' (tourism section), later on switched to a freelanced career and nowadays mainly publishes on the Web. Observing the hospitality industry always has fascinated him as it looks like the perfect combination of sleeping and writing – work-live-balance as its best.

Roland also heads the annual 4Hoteliers ITB Berlin news micro-site journalist and video/photo teams. For more info: www.4Hoteliers.com/itb