Cops
I used to travel to a place near Houston, Texas quite regularly, and stayed in the same hotel every time, a Hilton Garden Inn. Only one time I couldn't get in there, so I was booked into a different hotel, the 'La Quinta', right next to the highway.

The receptionist was wearing a hard hat and didn't look at me once during check in: he kept his eyes glued to a screen, but I couldn't see what it was showing. There were women who were very obviously hookers hanging around in the lobby. Breakfast was from vending machines. The bedroom itself wasn't too bad, but it was noisy, and there were suspicious stains everywhere.

But the thing that made it really memorable was when I was woken in the middle of the night by a lot of loud noises. Looking out of the window I saw a police helicopter hovering overhead, shining a very brght light into the hotel car park, while a voice over a loud hailer said something indecipherable. Would have loved to know what was going on, but in the morning the hard-hatted receptionist just told me that it was normal.
(Smale is stuffed, Mon 1 Dec 2014, 20:56, Reply)