Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Tag: Campanile

  • Hull – Campanile Hull

    Hull – Campanile Hull

    Back to last week, I had a one night stay at this Campanile hotel located near to the city centre in Hull. It’s part of an international chain that I think has seen better days in the UK, but they still have several locations open throughout the country.

    The hotel warned me in advance that they needed photo ID from every guest, which suggests serious issues with the guests that they’ve been getting. Although this is potentially something of an inconvenience to me, I still had my passport with me to resolve that issue without problems. The staff at the hotel were friendly and apparently are a new team, so are keen to do their best. I suspect that they’ll struggle given what they have to work with though.

    This type of keycard was introduced in the 1980s and they were apparently reasonably common at this time, usually produced by VingCard. That they survive is quite amazing and an early indication that this hotel is in need of a modernisation.

    The room was clean and well presented, although very dated with the heater and hair dryer being broken. There was just one power point and it was literally that, it required the TV to be unplugged to use it. This is far from ideal and the hotel will at some point have to entirely renovate these rooms to bring them up to some sort of modern standard. They also need to replace the external signage as some letters have fallen off, which is not the first impression that guests are going to be surprised and delighted at. Well, maybe surprised actually. It might be the case that it’s easier to demolish the entire hotel and rebuild it, as the structure doesn’t exactly look that expensively built in the first place.

    I quite liked this hotel and I didn’t have any noise issues either internally or externally. That might have been partly good luck though, as the motel type arrangement means that any late night noise would reverberate around the rooms, something which is evident from the series of negative reviews that the hotel had received about this. And onto the matter of reviews, this hotel is clearly struggling and it one of the worst rated in the city. I’m not sure that I would stay here again as I think the potential downside of noise issues is too high, but if they renovated the rooms and made the whole location a little nicer, then it might be considerably better. But, whether by chance or not, I had no issues and felt that the hotel was certainly something slightly different.

  • Basildon – Campanile Hotel

    Basildon – Campanile Hotel

    This stay was a few weeks ago, before everything was shut back down.

    One thing I’ve noted is that motels don’t tend to do very well in the UK, there’s something that the British don’t seem to like about having open and external corridors. There was a little bit of a building frenzy of them in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s, but that ebbed away. They work well in the United States and they seem more common across mainland Europe, with Campanile being a French chain (and they seem to have lots of locations in Poland amongst others). Anyway, I stayed here as it was the cheapest option, I can eschew luxury.

    The room was actually clean and comfortable, although dated. The welcome at reception was one of the best I’ve had in a hotel, a very enthusiastic staff member explaining everything he could. So, there was nothing really wrong with the room’s cleanliness or the staffing.

    The plug sockets are hidden away, I can’t recall a sign in a hotel room helping customers to find them. This could, and probably should, be remedied even with the use of extension leads. They can be nailed in (not through the wire, even my limited electrical knowledge knows that) if customers keep pinching them.

    Hmmm, this lamp should have just been thrown away. This is doing nothing for the room.

    I was moderately puzzled at this. It is in keeping with what is being offered, a room with en-suite bathroom. But, I’m not entirely sure that it’s the best image to offer as the first thing a customer sees.

    The hotel has sunk to the bottom of the reviews and has collapsed its prices as well, which is usually a freefall for a location that it can’t recover from. The difficulty is that groups on a night out often book the cheapest option as they’re just looking for somewhere to stay. And, unfortunately, sometimes these groups cause issues for the hotel and their guests.

    And…. The hotel dealt with this little crisis well, it was a birthday party coming back which got out of hand very quickly in terms of noise. The police were called immediately (I assume by the hotel, although a guest might have reported them I suppose) and came in about six vans. The group were not the politest to the police, but the law won out here quite quickly. Anyway, this is just what the hotel didn’t need at 01:00 (although I quite like drama like this, as I was awake anyway), and this sort of problem is riven through its reviews. Along with the rooms which need refurbishment.

    But, the staff here seem determined to turn things around, with the recent reviews for their food being positive and customer service was way above average. Other than policegate, the location was quiet and everything was clean, so I’d stay again if I went back to Basildon. Although, I’m not sure why I’d need to go back to Basildon, but the town’s main attraction is just around the corner from this hotel.