We're Getting Banned for This Review: The Hotel X Investigation
Editors Note - In October 2024, we reviewed Hotel X. The owner subsequently refurbished the property, and we had intended to revisit. Before we could, she sent a group notice to her 536 members expressing dissatisfaction with our original review, describing it as "half assed," and questioning whether we had been paid to criticise her hotel. We take feedback seriously, and so, investigative correspondent Sarah Tonin went along to take a fresh look, staying for a week. What follows is her piece, published unedited.
(Dirk Absinthe, Editor)
Review by Sarah Tonin
Lazy Summary
Consistent aesthetic that was consistently not for me
Personalized service from human and robot staff
Conveniently-located wand wash station
The correct amount of rezzers is always zero
For PBR maximalists
From the Investigative Files of Sarah Tonin:
There's something you should know about Dirk Absinthe: The man loves hotels. He lives hotels. If his breath smells like hotels, it's because he breathes hotels too. Most of all he inspects hotels. To Dirk, hotels are the finest thing there ever was, and to stay at a hotel and consider it on its merits is the finest thing a man might do.
But to love hotels is to love the proprietors of hotels too, and proprietors are fickle creatures. To pour one's heart and soul into creating a space where strangers might rest their heads and enjoy a refreshing beverage from a miniature fridge bolted to the floor is at once both deeply vulnerable and intensely personal. There is nothing quite like it.
The promise of escape. The offer of sanctuary. These magnificent spaces with their liminal closeness; at once public and private but never permanent, the hotel and its proprietor dancing away like dervishes whirling toward the divine.
Into this steps the inspector.
Eighty-Sixed by Hotel X
The text from Dirk arrived as a call. It was morning and Violet (Editor’s note - Violet Voxel) was dictating her field notes. "Sasquatch, alias Yeti, formally Paranthropus, informally Skunk Ape." She paused, referring to some jots in an untidy scrawl. "Fibre sample acquired from failed lasso trap--" Her steady, science-adjacent prattle was interrupted by Mark Snow on my phone's speaker. I answered.
"Sarah, there's a problem. It's a real pickle. You see--"
"Calm down, Dirk. Start from the beginning."
That was the beginning."
"Okay, but Violet was doing her dictation. She can't record a thing when we're yammering on. Text me instead?"
"I'll try to keep this short. Is the line secure? Remember Hotel X?” I did not remember Hotel X. "Inspected it last fall. Three stars, recommended. Wasn't perfect, but you know how it is." I knew how it was. I knew all about Dirk's soft spot for passion projects. "I'm in a real jam here, Sarah. She's redone the place. Top to bottom. Soup to nuts. Waxen sphere. I've got to review it again."
"I don't see the problem. You are the Hotel Inspector aren't you?"
"That's just it. She's threatened to ban me. I'm kaput, Sarah. Persona non grata."
Violet muttered "de nada"under her breath and set down her notes. She began to pack. This again. Dirk's criticism can hit strange nerves: "Welcome cookie crumbled." "Inadequate ply." "Why unidirectional peephole?" Who hasn't had their hackles raised by blistering invective.
Proprietress and inspector locked in symbiotic dance. Such relationships rarely last long.
Investigation note: No, really! Dirk's on such thin ice:
(Source: "My review isn't on the Hotel Inspectors[sic] page anymore!" -- Hotel X VIP Group Notice, June 1 2026)
Poorly Compensated Lobbyist
The first thing they teach at Hotel Inspector School is lobbies. There are rules of thumb. When you enter a hotel and find it empty, you know where you aren't. As a guiding principle this is as good as any polestar. It was obvious where we weren't. Where we were remained up for debate.
This particular lobby was cast with vaporwave candescence, each corner's soft shadows worn weary into the plastic and particle board like spectres of atavistic fluorescence, an apparition of gas transmuted and rendered ignoble. Teals and purples and pinks in globular relief on windows which extended in lofty retreat from the zebra stripe carpeting below, those rushing spirits of an age long forgotten. The 2010s.
My jaw dropped. "Do you think they have glow bowling?"
Investigation note: The build at Hotel X is modern, with heavy use of PBR textures everywhere. To my taste, it's a little too much of a good thing. Every surface pops, but there's no subtlety to it. There were also some odd orbicular texture issues.
Violet had mounted a roomba and was riding it around. It was one of the lobby's two denizens. She had already named him Claude. A stalwart presence, endlessly roaming the zebrine vastness in search of dust, lint, and fiber. It's no wonder she was attracted to the device. Such Sisyphean work ethic. Surely it would help advance her research.
The other individual present was Mystique, the proprietress of Hotel X. She greeted me instantly, offered her assistance, and politely ignored Violet. What service! I had just spent an entire weekend hunting for a check-in desk at the most popular hotel in Second Life, and here was a true professional. You see what I mean. Esprit de corps. It's rare to find someone who takes pride in their work these days.
Violet rolled over to the front desk. Claude hummed sadly under her haunches. "Two for laser tag."
"She means we'll take the Deluxe Terrace Suite. For a week."
Investigation note: Hotel X is priced reasonably. Furnished suites range from L$600 to L$1,000 per week, with unfurnished residential options if you want to call this place your home.
Roomside Pool
Mystique directed us to our room on the third floor. There were two routes: an old-school elevator and some manner of new-fangled teleportation gizmo. It seemed renovations were still ongoing, as there were no stairs in the place. I wondered about the fire code.
"Race you." Violet already had one foot through the teleporter's energy field. Her form curdled and effervesced and I smelled singed hair. I could not bear to watch, and jammed on the elevator button instead. It glowed with a certain knowledge. The cumulative wisdom of a thousand small delays. I heard creaking cables and the car's rumble of protest.
Once inside the suite, we began exploring our home-for-a-week. The lobby's colour palette had made its way up; it was all muted mood lighting in purple and purpler. In some places this might feel intimate, but here the sprawl and sparseness of the space was alienating. It's spacious but underdecorated, and for every interesting object there's an eyesore. The floorplan was odd. One bedroom is poolside without a wall. There was a toilet aimed at a floor-to-ceiling window. If you were to stay as a group there would not be much privacy.
Investigation note: Hotel rooms are basically sexy by default. And as an out hotelsexual, I was disappointed to find this suite turned me off. The space made me feel gloomy and down. All of the furniture was adult and modern, but it was an absolute hodgepodge. There was a tacky rezzer by the door--alongside an equally unsightly security orb and rental meter--that would dump various bits of sex furniture in the entrance. Sometimes more is less.
Common Arrears
The next day we explored the common areas. I've got to hand it to Mystique, she knows how to perpetuate a colourway. The pool is zebra-striped and its water is cast green by the lights. Like the suite, this space feels a little undercooked--there's a giant screen hanging over the pool and a hot tub, but a lot of floor space remains unused.
In addition to the pool, Hotel X features a nightclub. With its dancefloor and stage and DJ booth and roped-off VIP seating, this space felt more naturalistic than the lobby or the pool or even our suite.
Investigator's note: As you would expect, the ice machine wand wash was conveniently in the corridor outside our room. Note the zebra print.
Robot Floorsweep Slapfight Bonanza
Here's a travel tip: If you don't want to spend all your time in your hotel, make sure there's nothing to do there. Hotel X is like Bruges. Or Cork. A day or two is enough. Violet tugged at my sleeve as we transited the lobby with our bags.
"Sarah, look. Claude's in a fight with that box over there."
So he was. Whirring away and ramming at an adversary, the roomba's bearings chortled as if they bore the punchline to a private joke, the sort of joke that only a vacuum cleaner might comprehend. It probably involved silly lint.
Our contestant in the red corner was a simple cardboard box. It was punched full of air holes and had seen better days. A corrugated handhold perforated in aperture revealed a set of eyes that appeared most familiar. Look closer now, and you might catch sight of a moustache nigh iconic.
"Dirk?!" I ran over and turned Claude ninety degrees, thereby thwarting disaster. Away he hummed, sputtering profanity in wingding and klaxon. Machine lingo. I knew I had made an enemy until the end of a warranty period.
"Shh, Sarah!" Dirk hissed sharply, "You'll blow my cover!"
Violet was quick to catch up and no less confused. "What's all this? Why's Dirk--"
"Shhhhhh!" The box and I shushed her in unison. Then I asked the box what it was doing here, given its predicament with Hotel X's management.
"You don't understand. You've never been banished from anywhere. Like in ancient Greece. Only worse! They had this ostracism. Had to do with pottery." He snapped his fingers. It was muffled by the box. "Those guys, they would kick you out pronto if you toed the wrong line."
He went on. He spoke of Athens and he spoke of Pericles. Somehow they hadn't kicked out Pericles. Dirk was a wounded animal shrinking from an uncertain future, from uncertain pain. He had felt the stab of banishment before. He had been barred from establishments that would accept anyone. Anyone at all, if they could afford to pay.
"...but review enough hotels. You'll see. It'll happen to you, too."
To stay at a hotel, to consider it on its merits. The joys of criticism. And now here was this proud inspector, skulking around a lobby in packaging. It's true what they say. To love is to leave yourself vulnerable.
Conclusion
Hotel X feels like a work in progress that doesn't quite come together. It's admirably consistent in its aesthetic, but its aesthetic is marred by the inclusion of functional (but tacky) objects--rezzers, security orbs, and yes, cum cleanup stations. This causes the space to feel lifeless. It's lacking soul. Or whatever soul it has was instantiated in the vacuum cleaner. Not recommended in its present condition.
