Minimum rest when the hotel is the problem: the noise, the construction, the room not ready and what the agreements and regulators say about rest quality
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#1 Finnair, Helsinki, and Chris wrote the crew rest rules for the aircraft and the layover. This is the specific case that the rules do not cover well and that every long haul crew has lived: the rest period is legal on paper and the hotel makes it impossible in practice.
The cases
The room next to the construction site. The hotel that put the crew on the floor with the wedding. The room not ready for three hours after a night arrival. The air conditioning that does not work in Bangkok. The fire alarm at 4am. The hotel in the city centre with the nightclub. The crew bus that did not come and the rest period that started an hour late. All of them are rest periods that are legal in length and useless in quality.
What the regulators say
EASA and the others define the rest period in hours and require the operator to provide 'suitable accommodation' for the rest away from base, with suitable defined loosely (a quiet, dark, ventilated room with a bed, roughly). The regulator does not inspect the hotel. The airline's obligation is to provide it and the crew's recourse is the fatigue report if the rest was not restful.
What the agreements say
The stronger agreements (the Scandinavian, the German, the Dutch, the Australian, the BA and Virgin ones) specify the hotel standard: single rooms, a noise standard, the room ready on arrival, the crew floor away from the events, the air conditioning, the blackout. The union inspects the hotels at some airlines and the crew can report a hotel through the union. At the carriers without the agreement, the hotel standard is the airline's policy and the crew's complaint goes to the crew hotel desk, which may or may not act.
What the crew should do on the night
Ask for a different room, immediately, politely, and the hotel will usually move you. Call the airline's crew hotel desk if the hotel does not. Document the problem (a photo of the construction site, a note of the time the room was ready). And, if the rest was not rest, file the fatigue report before the next duty and say so at the briefing, because the captain can and should take it into account.
The fatigue report as the lever
The hotel changes when the fatigue reports name it. The airlines track the reports by hotel and a hotel with a pattern is reviewed and sometimes dropped. The crew who do not file are the reason the hotel is still on the list. This is the same logic as every fatigue thread on this forum: the report is the mechanism and the silence is the problem.
The honest view
Most crew hotels are fine. The bad ones are known and the crew groups name them. The rest rules cover the length and not the quality, and the quality is the crew's to defend through the hotel desk, the union and the fatigue report. The Finnair hotels in Asia are good because the union inspected them and the crew reported the bad ones for years. That is how it is done.
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#2 Air NZ purser, and the rest period legal in length and useless in quality is the gap in every regulator's rules and the fatigue report is the only lever, exactly as Oskar says. The hotel with a pattern of reports is dropped. The crew who file are the reason.
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#3 SAS, and the Scandinavian agreements' hotel standard is specific and the union inspects. The crew who report a hotel through the union see it fixed within months. The agreement is the thing again.
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#4 Lufthansa, and the Tarifvertrag hotel standard plus the works council means a bad hotel is a formal process and the hotel changes. The crew at the carriers without it envy this and should file the fatigue reports twice as hard.
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#5 United SFO, and the US contracts specify the hotel standard and the union's hotel committee inspects. The Asia hotels we have are good because the committee dropped the bad ones over a decade. The fatigue report is the US lever too.
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#6 Qatar, and the Gulf carriers' hotels are generally excellent and the crew hotel desk acts fast when called. The fatigue report exists and is less used, which is the record culture again. The room change on the night works everywhere.
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#7 Virgin, two years, and the Bangkok air conditioning case was my last trip and I did not file because I did not know I could. Now I know. Next time the report goes in before the briefing.