What does a celebrity bring when checking into a hotel? Glamour, buzz, and sometimes, a whole lot of chaos.
Sure, hosting a famous guest can translate into great PR for a hotel, but “it can also be a mixed bag,” admits Mark Plonkey, the general manager of Denver’s Hotel Teatro. “The one thing I’ve learned throughout the years is that public persona is not always the reality behind closed doors.”
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With their whirlwind lifestyles, many celebrities spend a lot of time in hotel rooms—and sometimes, hotels end up turning their famous guests away, even banning them, for bad behavior. The history of celebrity-trashed hotels has its roots, of course, in rock ’n’ roll. Back in the 1960s, The Who was supposedly banned from all Holiday Inns after drummer Keith Moon backed a car into a hotel pool.
What does it take to get officially banned these days? John Travolta recently got bad press with reports of “creepy” behavior that has made him unwelcome at the spa of New York’s Peninsula. In Las Vegas, Paris Hilton was once banned from the Wynn after she got arrested there for possession of cocaine.
“We look at many celebrities as one-hit wonders—they stay once, and we may never see them again,” says David Sanford, general manager of Cape Cod’s Crowne Pointe Historic Inn and Brass Key Hotel. “But we have other guests who come every year and who don’t damage our rooms.” He’s quick to note that most celebrity guests have been nothing but gracious; Eartha Kitt even volunteered to sing in the lobby for fellow guests.
According to most hotel managers that Travel + Leisure spoke with, most conflicts with celebrities are pretty mundane, and often result from overzealous “handlers:” demands for discounts or precise requests like a bowl of single-colored M&Ms. Plonkey recalls one musician who threatened to take his 50-room entourage elsewhere if the hotel couldn’t add Turner Classic Movies to its cable offerings within a half hour.
But other hotels know that debauchery can be good for business. “We embrace the spirit of rock ’n’ roll,” says Brandon Powers, creative director of the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. “They can trash their room or even take a donkey up there, so long as we don’t have to clean up after it in the casino. It takes a lot for us to ask someone to leave.”
See which celebrities have been banned from hotels >
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John Travolta
The Incident: Did the Saturday Night Fever star really lose his spa privileges? According to an insider at New York City’s Peninsula Hotel, Travolta was banned for repeated “inappropriate behavior” at the spa in the early 2000s. Reportedly, after enough male employees complained about Travolta’s “creepy” antics during massages, the actor was banished to the “no-thigh zone.”
Still Unwelcome? The ban was lifted after about three years, claimed the Peninsula source, though Travolta’s representative declared the whole thing hogwash. Either way, the actor was reportedly seen back at the Peninsula’s fitness center in Spring 2012.
Charlie Sheen
The Incident: It’s become a modern hotel-trashing classic: when staying at New York City’s Plaza in 2010, the actor supposedly had an adverse reaction to “medication” and went into an underwear-clad rage in his room—all while a recently acquainted porn actress hid in the bathroom out of fear. Sheen’s smashing of mirrors, TV, and furniture supposedly racked up $20,000 in damages before the authorities intervened.
Still Unwelcome? The Plaza has reportedly banned Sheen for life—and other Manhattan hotels have taken a similar stance: the Waldorf-Astoria and the Trump SoHo have supposedly refused to book Sheen. Sheen’s representative, meanwhile, told one reporter that the actor also has the travel obstacle of finding a hotel that will let him smoke.
Amanda Bynes, Lindsay Lohan
The Incident: Hollywood’s Standard Hotel found itself entangled with two former child stars in the spring of 2012. First, former Nickelodeon actress Amanda Bynes was reportedly banned from entering the hotel’s nightclub Smoke & Mirrors when she arrived just hours after she’d been arrested, and then released, on suspicion of a DUI.
Lindsay Lohan, meanwhile, opted to beat the hotel to the punch. Within days of the Bynes incident, Lohan reportedly got into a fight with another patron at Smoke & Mirrors, after which Lohan reportedly banned herself from the hotel, declaring it “a curse” for her.
Still Unwelcome? The Standard would not comment, saying only that its policy is “to create a comfortable and inviting experience for their guests,” adding that any incidents are handled on a case-by-case basis.
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