If you've ever doled out good money for accommodation only to find on arrival that your room is a dirty, windowless box and the sheets have a bed bug infestation, you're not alone. Travel website Tripadvisor.com has compiled lists of the dirtiest hotels in Asia (and the Pacific), the United States and the United Kingdom as well as France, Germany, Italy, India and Spain.

The results are based on hotel reviews left on the TripAdvisor website by disgruntled travellers.

"Avoid unless you like being solicited continuously", a review of the 'dirtiest' hotel in Asia, Bangkok's First Hotel, was headed.

"Awful awful awful - thought Jack Nicholason [sic] was going to burst through the door," a reader wrote of London's Cromwell Crown - the 'dirtiest' UK hotel according to TripAdvisor.

"Shocked and horrified," summed up an Australian traveller's review of the Central Hotel am Dom in Cologne, Germany.

Following publication of the lists earlier this year, Times reporter Stephen Bleach was sent to spend a night at the Cromwell.

Bleach admitted he was somewhat sceptical of anonymous user reviews, but he quickly discovered some common ground with TripAdvisor's faceless critics: "Sitting in room 406 in the grey light of dawn, I have one argument with the TripAdvisor verdict. I became a squalor connoisseur in my backpacking days, and I reckon this isn't just the worst hotel in Britain. I think it might be the worst hotel in the world," he wrote.

Some cities fared worse than others, with hotels in New Delhi and Paris each taking eight of the 10 spots on the list of 'dirtiest' hotels in India and France respectively.

No hotels in New Zealand, Australia or the Pacific were mentioned on the lists.

The 'dirtiest' hotel in the US, New York's Hotel Carter, has been reviewed 804 times on TripAdvisor - 657 of the reviewers gave it two stars or less.

A reader who stayed there last month gave it a damning review under the heading: "Discover new diseases during your stay - For free!!"

"I wouldn't bother staying at Hotel Carter even if you paid me. My safety and health are worth much more than any price," they wrote.

"I would even consider sleeping outside with the homeless, for a cardboard box must be safer than this place."

Ten hotels are mentioned in each regional category bar Germany, which has just three.

"We looked everywhere, honest. But our members tell us there aren't that many dirty hotels in Germany," the editors at TripAdvisor wrote.

Some of TripAdvisor's 'dirtiest hotels in the world':