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Tag: Travelodge

  • London – Greenwich (Borough of) – Travelodge Greenwich High Road

    London – Greenwich (Borough of) – Travelodge Greenwich High Road

    It was too hot when earlier in the week I visited the Travelodge on Greenwich High Road, a hotel which is likely usually busy with tourists at this time of year, but is currently selling rooms at under £25. When I arrived the helpful man at reception seemed quite hot, which coincided with how hot I was as well. He was satisfactorily agreeable about how hot it was, so I liked him.

    Travelodge have two hotels relatively near to each other, this one at Greenwich High Road which is next to the railway station, and another simply known as Greenwich, which is next to Deptford Bridge railway station. I suppose tourists find the name of Deptford Bridge as being perhaps not quite as appealing. When I told the receptionist my name, he couldn’t find the booking, and I knew what was coming, he was going to politely tell me that I was at the wrong hotel. Fortunately, Google had already alerted me to there being two hotels, and I was at the right one. All was well. And another thanks to the receptionist for giving me paper so that I could handwrite the witness statement for some Norfolk and Suffolk LDWA group members. Actually, now I’ve written that, it sounds wrong. They weren’t in court, it was evidence that they had finished the LDWA 100. Anyway, I digress.

    The receptionist, who I felt I had built up a rapport with as we didn’t like the heat, gave me an ideal room right at the end of a corridor which he said would be quiet. He was absolutely right, I heard pretty much nothing from within the hotel, although I think it was fairly busy. I was pleased to discover that there was a fan in the room, so that stayed on the entire night. It was also clean, comfortable and sufficiently well maintained for me to be entirely pleased.

    I usually use the stairs in a hotel (unless I’m on the top floor or something tiring) but I never worked out where they were (and I didn’t take much care to look) so I used the lift. Which gave an interesting (well, not very interesting, but I’ll mention it) lift etiquette issue. With this virus, hotels ask for guests not to share lifts. So I go down in the lift, which stops at the floor below. That irritated me slightly as we were now on the first floor, and I thought that I was pushing it not finding the stairs to go down from the second floor. Anyway, a moderately drunken man who seemed very friendly asked politely if he could get in the lift. I think the words were “am I alright to get in with you mate, I’ve got no virus”. I wasn’t, to be honest, much concerned of the pandemic risk and it also prevented an awkward social encounter where I told him to wait for another lift. But, being British and avoiding conflict (I mean in a Very British Problems way, not making reference to the nation’s empire building in the nineteenth century), I wonder how many guests would have politely told the man to wait. I’ve digressed again.

    A view from the hotel room window and there’s a DLR train at the station in the centre of the photo. And, yes, I did stand there waiting for a train to arrive to take that photo. I really do need to get out more…..

    I very much liked this hotel as it was clean, cheap, comfortable and the staff member didn’t like the hot weather. Frankly, I’d be willing to stay at a hotel far more willingly if I knew that they had a staff member complaining about the hot weather at reception, that’s something I’d find very beneficial for my stay. The hotel did have a bar and restaurant, and was also offering breakfasts, but I didn’t partake on this occasion. It’s a convenient hotel to get to though as it’s next to the station, which also has regular trains which go straight into the city centre. All very lovely.

  • London – Hammersmith and Fulham (Borough of) – Fulham Travelodge

    London – Hammersmith and Fulham (Borough of) – Fulham Travelodge

    At the moment, I switch hotels to whichever seems to be the cheapest in London for the evening, with that exciting accolade going to Travelodge Fulham yesterday with their room for under £25 for the night. Easily accessible from the nearby Fulham Broadway underground station, it’s a convenient option for those coming from central London.

    It’s not exactly the most decadent choice, but it’s a serviceable hotel option and the staff members at the front desk were helpful and engaging. The public areas seemed clean, if not entirely well maintained, and one of the lifts had a missing button to get to one of the floors and that wasn’t entirely ideal.

    My room and this is the first time I’ve experienced a hotel in the UK that doesn’t have a duvet on the bed, just sheets. There was a reason for this, which was that the room was very hot and the building hasn’t been blessed with air conditioning. The duvet was though there in the room, in that blue bag in the corner, for anyone who wanted it.

    Richard was staying in the same hotel, and he looks for decadence and expense in everything, so he upgraded himself to a Super Room. In the interests of showing the difference, this is his room. I didn’t allow him in it until I had taken photographs of it, although fortunately he didn’t complain at that situation. It does have a nicer feel to it.

    The Super Room costs £5 per night more than the standard rate and for that the guest gets a coffee machine, a Kit Kat, nicer curtains, a nicer framed picture on the wall, a more comfortable (but less practical) chair and, well, that’s it. In some hotels, the guest would enjoy free air conditioning as well, but that wasn’t offered here. Richard did though get a fan that I didn’t get (although they’ve available at reception for us less decadent guests), so I think he felt his £5 was well spent. Incidentally, and I won’t go on about it, but Richard broke the coffee machine, but fortunately, I was there to ensure that the machine worked again. Sometimes you just need someone practical…..

    Although the hotel was quite hot, it is the case that London is quite hot at the moment, so that could perhaps be forgiven. Given the prices currently being charged, I thought that the value was really rather good, especially as there were no noise disturbances either externally or internally. The kettle in my room needed replacing, but I didn’t let that bother me, as I was busy collecting my free decadent coffee machine drinks from Richard’s room.

    The hotel is reasonably well reviewed, although on that review front, I did have a little browse through what guests had put on TripAdvisor. One reviewer had the title “teriminlly ill guest thrown out of hotel for having one ciggerate in room by manager” [sic] which is as it sounds, the guest decided to smoke in his room and was furious that the hotel was annoyed at this situation. The hotel unsurprisingly remained furious and stood by their decision.

    A few guests also noted that there was lovely air conditioning in reception and by the lifts, so they suggested moving bedding and sleeping there. To be fair, the reception area was kept beautifully cool, so that wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world, although I’d be interested to see what the staff thought about it if anyone tried. Another guest, also annoyed at the lack of air conditioning, posted a review titled “the oven of hell”, which summed up his experiences. He suggested, and this is a good strategy:

    “We had a fan on in the room, the curtains closed, window open, but the only way to sleep was to soak the towels in cold water and drape them over us whilst we slept!”

    He’s probably right though that it might have been better to put some form of air conditioning in rather than spend years fielding complaints from guests. The review about someone who left their phone charger is well worth a read, I can see why the staff soon got fed up with hearing about this phone charger.

    Anyway, I thought it was all clean and organised, so I’d happily stay here again, although only at a lower point. I note some guests paid over £100 for their rooms, and I can imagine why they were annoyed at the temperature issues.

  • London – Tower Hamlets (Borough of) – Travelodge Docklands

    London – Tower Hamlets (Borough of) – Travelodge Docklands

    Judging from the price of hotels in the city, there is still not a huge enthusiasm to travel to London at the moment, not least with the obvious lack of international tourists and business travellers. This was the keenly priced Travelodge Docklands, which is a shortish walk from Canary Wharf that came to a total price of £24.99. Staffing here was minimal, but friendly, which suffices me when paying £24.99.

    I’m not sure that Travelodge rooms vary much, and they haven’t departed from the standard here. All clean and well presented, and most importantly perhaps (to me) they have windows that actually open so that the room isn’t hermetically sealed. There were no noise issues either internally or externally, I suspect partly as there weren’t that many people actually in the hotel. But either way, that made for a peaceful night. Although I’d add that it’s quite a hike to get back to reception if you’ve placed in a room right in the far corner of the hotel. But if I can walk 100 miles (have I mentioned that before?) then I can get back to reception I suppose.

    The view from the room, with Canary Wharf over on the left-hand side. For those who like taking their cars everywhere, there’s a large car park on site although I suspect they might charge a hefty sum for that. I wasn’t burdened by such issues though, the DLR stop is a three minute walk away.

    The most exciting element for me was the history behind this whole site, as until 100 years ago, this was East India Docks. The Travelodge sits towards the top of East India Import Dock, but all of this is now gone, with the exception of the East India Dock Basin which is still there. The streets in the area around the Travelodge are named after products which were once imported into these docks, such as Coriander Avenue, Rosemary Drive, Saffron Avenue, Nutmeg Lane, Sorrel Lane and Clove Crescent.

    My room was somewhere about where that boat is in the centre at the front, so it’s fair to say that quite a lot has changed here since this illustration was made around 200 years ago.

    Anyway, for £24.99 I thought it was all excellent value for money. I suspect it’s usually a lot more than that and so perhaps less exciting value for what is quite a basic hotel. I didn’t need their wi-fi, but that’s a chargeable service (there’s 30 minutes free) and the whole arrangement is all more functional rather than luxurious.

    I had a little look on TripAdvisor and the hotel isn’t badly reviewed, although there are of course some angry customers. The hotel’s lack of mattress protectors is incredibly brave of them, since they’ll end up chucking mattresses away at quite a pace (or picking up negative reviews about that). I liked the “upon arrival in the room there was no Kit Kat chocolate bar”, which reminds me of an episode of The Hotel with Mark Jenkins.

    And the customer who was “shocked” at:

    “The room cleaning service women was from Eastern Europe which is not an issue but the issue I had with her was she didn’t speak or understand a word of English”.

    Odds are they did understand quite a lot of words of English (but studiously ignored the guest), but I’m not sure why a guest really needs an in-depth conversation with the room cleaning staff anyway, who are probably distracted with cleaning rooms. There was another angry guest that check-in is “very late”, despite it being 3pm which is hardly unusual.

    And another guest who noted:

    “To top it off there were people running around in their underwear in reception.”

    I suppose readers have to picture the scene as they feel appropriate, as no more details were given. But my favourite of all was:

    “We requested a wake up call and taxi for the following morning but nobody woke us up”.

    The hotel reminded the customer that Travelodge don’t offer wake up calls, but I’d like to hear more about what the staff members had promised. A mischievous evening staff member perhaps…..

     

  • London – Hackney (Borough of) – Hackney – Travelodge

    London – Hackney (Borough of) – Hackney – Travelodge

    The Travelodge in Hackney is on the left-hand side of this photo (in the building, not the railway station platform as even Travelodge haven’t got rooms that basic), easy to reach from the city centre by bus or London Overground. In terms of noise, I like the sound of trains overnight, but then again, I’ve long since decided that I like urban sounds (I mean in relation to the background noise of a city, not a type of music) such as this to feel the most rested. My tolerance of noise is less liked by some others though judging from their reviews about being kept awake.

    There is a shared door with Kip Hotels to get into the building, a slightly unusual set-up of two rival hotels with one entrance.

    Anyway, let me at least try to paint some kind of picture of the scene on arrival. I entered the reception area and an alarm was going off throughout the building. The receptionist looked stressed, she now had two waiting guests and she didn’t know why the alarm was going off. She ran out of reception looking quite harassed by the situation and went to investigate why her hotel wasn’t working properly. It’s not an ideal welcome to be honest.

    Then a man with his two sons (or I assume they were his) came into reception and it’s fair to say that these children were not the quietest that I’ve ever encountered. The receptionist comes back at this point and apologises for the wait, but she says she needs to keep investigating as she can’t work out why an alarm is going off. At this point, the man explains that his two kids might have been the cause of the alarm due to a tripping incident near the lift. This was a relief for the receptionist, she now knew why her hotel was broken. She disappeared off to try and turn the alarm off, but she seemed pleased that she understood what had happened.

    Another staff member appeared, who was a sea of calm in a reception where two children were running around screaming and an alarm was going off. She dealt with the customer in front of me and ensured he was content, before trying to assist the man with his two children. I had by this point moved out of the queueing arrangement to stand near the wall, which stopped the two loud children running around me. The man kindly mentioned that I had been first, but I’m a helpful sort of person and I let him go ahead as he needed a new keycard. This altruistic behaviour of mine was, if I’m being honest, also useful to discover what part of the hotel the kids were located in so that I wasn’t near to them. I have a feeling that the receptionist guessed this, I was placed on the ground floor which was as far as possible to have been placed away from the kids.

    I’d add that the children weren’t bad, but they seemed to be quite loud and I like the noise of trains and traffic, I’m less good with the sound of exuberant children. Anyway, I digress.

    The bedroom was fine, it’s not the largest Travelodge room that I’ve had, but it met my requirements. It had a door, a window that opened, a ceiling, walls, a bathroom, a carpet that didn’t stick, clean bedsheets, a desk, a bin, a kettle, towels and a light. There are quite a few requirements there, but I think that some of them are quite basic needs. And, I heard no more noise either internally or externally until I checked out, although I’m unsure how many guests there actually were in the rest of the building.

    I didn’t see any staff members when checking out and if it wasn’t for the excitement of check-in, I feel I might have found the whole experience just a little unnotable. This room cost under £20 for the night, which is ridiculous for a London hotel the week before Christmas. But, we live in interesting times….

  • London – Newham (Borough of) – Travelodge ExCeL

    London – Newham (Borough of) – Travelodge ExCeL

    This isn’t a good time for hotels in London, and I can’t imagine many times where Travelodge have been selling off rooms in the capital at under £20 just a couple of nights before the stay. So, this looked like a rather good price and the hotel is conveniently located next to a DLR station, and also next to where I stayed last week at the Holiday Inn Express.

    My expectations were frankly a little low, a room of £20 and some not great recent reviews didn’t fill me with confidence. In reality, it was all absolutely fine. There was no noise internally or externally, the room was clean and the staff member at reception was friendly and helpful. It was also useful that the staff member asked if I wanted a floor on a lower floor or at the top, so I went with my standard “top floor, away from lift” option. The room wasn’t enormous, but it was perfectly sufficient and there was free tea and coffee. Definitely hard to complain at under £20 per night.

    To my slight surprise, this was a slightly better built hotel than the Holiday Inn Express that’s next door. That hotel has been built with no individual air conditioning units and no facility to open windows. The Travelodge had gone for the approach of a window that opens to cool things and a heater to heat. I like such simple solutions, although it might be too hot in the summer (one reviewer said it was and they gave up with their room to sleep in the hotel’s bar). But I’m sure they offer fans then. The room could have done with some plug sockets near to the bed, but perhaps they’ll be put in when the hotel is refurbed.

    As an aside, one thing that annoys me slightly is the hotel’s response to reviews, which is pretty much always the same. There are all manner of reviews, from staff members bursting into a room when a customer was changing to a few allegations of theft and bed bugs, all with the exact same response from the hotel as they replied to someone who mentioned they found a hair on the floor. I like reviews from managers who just tell the truth, they’re more entertaining.

    Anyway, all rather good value for under £20.

  • Chelmsford – Travelodge

    Chelmsford – Travelodge

    I’ve moved away from Accor Hotels on this trip as I’m booking everything at the last minute. Accor do this moderately irritating thing of returning their room rates to a higher price nearer the date of booking, which is fine if they’re full, but not ideal if they’re not. Travelodge just charge what they need to do to get rid of the rooms, a strategy that I prefer as a customer.

    The reception area, which was the scene of some moderate drama. I went to check-in, but there were no staff members visible. A very angry lady behind me confronted a staff member when she appeared, telling her with some force that she was tired of her key card not working. The staff member was polite, but defensive, which escalated the matter and for a good minute I watched this argument developing. At that point, I felt the need to be moderately rude to ask if I could actually check-in if they were just going to have a heated debate about how the hotel was run and what was the area manager’s phone number. It wasn’t an ideal first impression, but the staff member was polite to me, likely pleased the other woman had gone back to her room to phone the area manager.

    Incidentally, the hotel appears to be a little lax with GDPR. They had the prices of what each customer had paid for their room on sheets left at the reception desk and I was pleased to discover that I had paid the least. This isn’t really information that should be left around though and I would have been most annoyed if other customers had received a better bargain.

    The room, which was clean and well presented, with a bath and shower which only some of the rooms had (as in only some of the rooms had both, not that some rooms just had an empty bathroom). This was all fine, especially for the not much over £25 that I had paid.

    The food in the photo looks dreadful and the reviews of their bar cafe are equally poor. I’m not really sure why they persist with trying to serve mediocre meals, I can’t see any benefit to annoying customers with low quality food.

    Housekeeping cleaning rooms only once every six nights is clearly ridiculous, way more than other hotel chains I’ve been in. There’s being careful with the current health situation and just not bothering to clean the rooms….

    The milks in the room were out of date. I do check these and I probably need to get out more…..

    All in all, I thought that this was a perfectly good deal for the two nights which cost just over £50. There are extra charges for parking, wi-fi and breakfast, although I didn’t need any of these. The hotel seemed quiet and in relatively sound repair, so I was content with my stay. It’s about a ten-minute walk to the city centre and there’s an Aldi supermarket opposite for those who need supplies of any sort.

  • Travelodge Hotels Being Rebranded into Accor?

    Travelodge Hotels Being Rebranded into Accor?

    Poor Travelodge has been rather battered about over the last few years, primarily as it never really caught up with the resurgence of Premier Inn. Travelodge has been financially damaged, not least by its internal structure, and it forced a large number of its hotel building owners to take a reduction in the rent that they could collect. This didn’t thrill the owners of many of these properties, who joined together to form the Travelodge Owners Action Group.

    This week, this group of landlords has revealed that they are considering switching hotel brands, which they can do thanks to a handily inserted break clause which they have. A spokesperson for the group said:

    “Our mission as an action group has always been to protect the interests of domestic savers and investors, who have been forced to contend with the aggressive tactics of offshore hedge funds willing to expend unparalleled resources to protect their profits, even at the expense of their own stakeholders. We are carrying on the fight against this unjust abuse of insolvency law that has been fuelled by weak government intervention and will do everything possible to mitigate the damage caused by this CVA.

    Following the inclusion of a landlord break option for over 500 Travelodge hotels within the terms of the CVA, we are in talks with a number of leading global hotel brands aimed at providing savers and investors with the long-term stability they require. Advanced discussions are ongoing with major operators such as Accor, Marriott, IHG, Hilton, Jury’s Inn, Magnuson Hotels and others. The purpose of this is to present a range of alternative options to Travelodge landlords, so that they can decide which structure would work best for them.”

    So, there are numerous hotel chains which might take over some of the sites, forcing Travelodge out. The one that I’m most hopeful about is Accor, they could operate a fair number of these sites and probably pay a larger rent than Travelodge are managing to. It’s unlikely to come to anything in the near future, but if Travelodge don’t work out their CVA in the next couple of years, that might mean an increased number of Accor locations for me to pop along to….

  • Peterborough – Travelodge

    My last trip of 2018 was to Peterborough, primarily because there was a Travelodge offer of three nights for a total of less than £60. Given that I had wanted to see Peterborough Cathedral and Peterborough Museum, and also since I had been meaning to visit the city for some time, this seemed a suitable bargain.

    The hotel, known as Peterborough Central, is located around a five-minute walk from the city centre. It’s not a particularly large hotel and it seems to be in an area of Peterborough which hasn’t fared particularly well over the last couple of years, it’s opposite a former Liquid nightclub which is boarded up and also opposite a Jimmy’s restaurant which has suffered the same fate.

    The staff at reception seemed rather jovial and offered a really friendly welcome, so all seemed well there. The room was relatively large, although slightly spartan, and it felt a little bit grubby. I couldn’t work out why the hot water didn’t smell entirely right, I can only assume their hot water tank is perhaps in need of some, well, fixing. But, given the room price and the central location, it would feel wrong complaining too much about the situation.

    I’m not sure that much good can come from these signs, as do the cleaning staff really just ignore the rooms where guests don’t put these on the door?

    The staff were generous when I asked for milk and they seemed to take every opportunity that they could to engage. This Travelodge is one which doesn’t have its own restaurant, as there are sufficient local dining options to mean one isn’t needed, which also means that they don’t do the all you can eat breakfast. Not that that’s a great loss to me since I wouldn’t have had it anyway, but it may have been an option some guests would have preferred.

    I didn’t encounter any noise issues during my stay, although the rooms on one side of the hotel do overlook the road. Given the prices that were being charged for this room, which seemed rather low for the week before Christmas, I thought it represented decent value for money. Perhaps Peterborough isn’t seen by the general public as a go-to destination for mid-December…