“There’s a seven-star hotel in Dubai with a load of one-star reviews on TripAdvisor,” says the philosophical lad on reception at the Broadway hotel in Blackpool. “You can’t please everyone.” He’s got a point: 28 visitors to the £1,400-a-night Burj Al Arab rated it as “terrible”, elaborating in varying degrees of illiteracy. “The TV had hardly any good channels they were mainly weird things in a different language!” mithered Sebastian S from London under the heading “APPAULING!”.

The difference is that the sheiks who own the Burj do not levy a fee of three times the nightly room rate on guests who post negative online reviews after their stay. That’s how the Broadway, a labyrinthine budget hotel in Blackpool’s South Shore area, made international news this week, when it emerged it had charged a couple from Cumbria £100 for slagging it off on TripAdvisor.

Tony and Jan Jenkinson found the charge on their credit card bill after describing the hotel as a “FILTHY, DIRTY ROTTEN STINKING HOVEL RUN BY MUPPETS!” after a stay in August. Tony had complained about inadequate parking, dodgy wiring, a bed from “the ark” and the lack of marmalade at breakfast. Plus the tea was weak. They’d paid £36 for the room but clearly hadn’t read the small print in their booking confirmation, which warned: “Despite the fact that repeat customers and couples love our hotel, your friends and family may not. For every bad review left on any website, the group organiser will be charged a maximum £100 per review.”

Since the Jenkinsons went public and Trading Standards got involved, the Broadway has promised to refund the money and pull its socks up, saying in a statement that “we desperately want to turn things around.” They aren’t that determined, given the hotel is for sale. According to the agents, £375,000 will buy you 46 bedrooms, a “Mediterranean-themed dining room”, sun lounge and a business with a turnover of £160,000.

In an email on Friday a spokesman said the charging for bad reviews, now scrapped, was to prevent “customers from defaming” the business, accusing the Cumbrian couple of insulting and upsetting hotel staff. “The Broadway Hotel is a three-star family-run budget hotel and we charge as little as £15 per room per night. I make a plea to customers to be more realistic in their reviews,” he said.

Arguably the Broadway was only doing what many other hoteliers around the world would do if they thought they could get away with it.

“I bet you don’t find one single hotelier who doesn’t have a bad review story – and that’s good hoteliers saying that. We have no way to fight back and that makes us so vulnerable,” said Claire Smith, a B&B owner who belongs to Stay Blackpool, a member organisation for more than 200 of the resort’s better hotels and guesthouses. Her own B&B, Number One St Luke’s, has been rated as “excellent” by 107 out of 113 guests on Trip Advisor. Just one visitor declared it “terrible”, largely on the basis that he thought Blackpool a “dump”.

“People will ring up and say ‘can I have a discount if I give you a good review on TripAdvisor?’ Or people will say the same when they are checking out, when they really have you over a barrel, especially when you say no and you worry what they will say,” said Smith.

She thinks visitors should be realistic. “If you pay £15 or £20 a night you surely can’t have that high expectations. What exactly are you expecting? Lunch can cost £15, never mind a bed for the night and breakfast,” she said. “The couple who booked into this place, well there were clues there. The hotel has no accreditation. I have to say that any forward-thinking hotelier is at least a member of something. They won’t be inspected and can do what they please. If you use Visit England or AA and then … look online for reviews, the majority for this property are abysmal.”

I paid £32.40 for my stay at the Broadway, calibrating my expectations accordingly. On arrival I was immediately upgraded to a family-sized suite with a view of the sea and the Big One rollercoaster at the nearby Pleasure Beach. The receptionist cheerfully admitted Googling everyone who had booked since the media storm broke and knew I was a journalist, but insisted I’d been bumped up not because I work for the Guardian but because they weren’t very busy now the Illuminations had been turned off. I wasn’t convinced: the chap from the Independent had been given the very same room the day before, complete with towel swan sculpture and industrial-sized telly, which buzzed like a malfunctioning intercom.

There was a ropey sofa bed with cushions that sloped curiously down – closer inspection revealed they were hiding the broken mechanism beneath. I wasn’t mad on the cracked polystyrene ceiling tiles of the kind you usually find in 1970s offices. The free wifi didn’t work in my room, but the kettle did. In an intriguing meta touch, there was a picture of six kittens sitting in a chest of drawers placed above the chest of drawers – I opened each to check for crusty socks and sanitary towel wrappers, two unwanted gifts documented on TripAdvisor, but they were empty. The carpet was stained but not obviously filthy. Everything smelled of Febreze. There was a small, dark hair on the bedside table, thankfully not a curly one. But the sheets were clearly fresh on, if mildly stained. The springs on the mattress certainly let themselves be known – not aurally but to my poor old back.

I wasn’t sad when the bar directly below shut shortly after 10.30pm, and the chart compilation that had seeped up through the ceiling since I’d checked in was finally put to bed. The shower was fine. There was plenty of hot water and a decent enough flow – not one of those underpowered sprinkles which couldn’t rinse conditioner from a fairy’s locks, let alone my thick hair.

Two weeks ago Jeanette M from Derby complained staff served breakfast while swigging from cans of Strongbow, an allegation the Broadway denies. Another claimed their jug of water had arrived with slivers of glass in it. But on Friday morning the waiter was a sober professional, serving strong pots of tea (twobags) and decent fry up with two sausages, two eggs, bacon, beans, a hash brown and fresh toast.

Tony Jenkinson was right about one thing, though: no marmalade.

• Additional reporting by Dominic Smith