The morning after the night before. I accept that, for a series of posts labelled “The Balkans”, a detailed account of one night at the Travelodge in Luton might not immediately excite and delight. However, two loyal blog readers want regular progress and perhaps an occasional third reader has finally tired of bar billiards, so some variety is required. And for me to start complaining about things…
I arrived shortly before midnight and found nobody at reception, despite pressing the call bell twice. I’ve stayed here numerous times and had a fairly good idea which team member was working. He is always friendly, although I have developed an entirely unsupported theory that he relaxes in the staff room watching Jet Lag: The Game, the finest YouTube series currently available, and occasionally needs a moment to return to the reality of a Travelodge reception. He eventually appeared and was as welcoming as ever. I rather like things remaining the same, so even the short wait had a reassuring familiarity to it.
There’s no bloody KitKat. I’ve emailed Travelodge to complain. The upgraded room was supposed to include one, so its absence represented an early setback for Travelodge’s move into luxury hospitality. I had intended to eat it as dessert following the McDonald’s melon balls, although I accept that this was not an evening meal demanding a carefully considered final course.
I have genuinely emailed Travelodge to complain, although not specifically about the KitKat. Travelodge has upgraded a number of rooms by adding a coffee machine, a chocolate bar and a few decorative touches (I stress the word ‘few’ here and suspect they cost less than a fiver) before charging a little more for them. In fairness, this was the only room type available and it was still very reasonably priced. I therefore had no objection to paying for it, but once a company starts promising decadence, even budget decadence, it needs to keep a firm grip on chocolate provision. My friend Richard, who thrives on decadence, would have been displeased as well.
The more legitimate problem was that the soap dispenser contained only water, while the other dispenser was empty. There were also a few minor cleanliness issues. None of this constituted a hospitality emergency, but functioning soap feels like a reasonable expectation even before the hotel begins exploring the outer reaches of capsule coffee.
And, there’s perhaps a serious point here which is that Travelodge really have piled pressure on team members and given them more do so, whilst investing heavily in things that will annoy customers, like charging them to pick their room and forcing them to upgrade to luxury rooms without KitKats. They’ve perhaps forgotten issues such as security, cleanliness and basic functions. If a customer books with Travelodge now they get four emails, which is evidently in my mind as they’ve thought of new ways to get customers to pay more, whether it’s breakfast, evening meals, wifi, late checkout, room placement and so on. Individually, these are perfectly reasonable. Collectively, they create the impression that a considerable amount of corporate energy has been devoted to discovering further things that can be sold.
I’m an advocate of Wizz Air, which also charges separately for almost everything it can identify. The difference, in my experience, is that it generally gets the basic operation right. The aircraft arrives, the flight takes place and I am deposited somewhere that broadly corresponds with the destination on the ticket. If an airline can maintain that level of organisational discipline, a hotel should be able to provide soap.
But, back to positivity, the room was cheap, there were no noise issues internally or externally, there was a fan and since I’ve pro-active enough to have a back-up mini bottle of liquid soap, all was well. However, if Travelodge want to start selling decadence, they need to deliver, or just scrap decadence and focus on being consistently average.