Holiday Inn Express City Centre Theatreland, Glasgow

...Crowne Plaza; Hotel Indigo; Holiday Inn; Express by Holiday Inn; Holiday Inn Express; Staybridge Suites; Candlebridge Suites; Intercontinental Hotels and Resorts and ANA Hotels in Japan.

Fortunately the lovely people at Quidco offer a 5% discount, but you have to remember to go in via the Intercontinental Hotels Group link. http://www.ichotelsgroup.com You then have to log into your Priority Club account before you start searching ...
...room at the Express by Holiday Inn Glasgow Theatreland. One weekday night bed and breakfast in a twin room was £79 - a best flexible rate. With 5% cashback, this works out at £75.05, not too bad for a last minute booking. The reservation process went through OK and I received my email confirmation immediately. http://www.hiexpressglasgow.co.uk/ interesting to see they have won awards from the Intercontinental Hotels Group.

Location:
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Background

I was up in Scotland for a short trip to Glasgow and Dundee and having decided on the Dundee Hilton for that part of the trip, took a look at Hilton hotels in Glasgow... Unfortunately, the prices were coming out at a pretty extortionate level and I wasn't especially impressed at the location of the 2 Hiltons in Glasgow either. Because I was only going to be in town for one night, it was important to be very near my main point of interest - the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall and also to get a cheapish rate for a single Thursday night stay.

Booking:

A quick session on Google soon threw up a few good ideas and since my other hotel frequent stay programme is the Priority Club which earns me British Airways miles, I decided to concentrate on that particular option.

Priority Club provides reservations for: Crowne Plaza; Hotel Indigo; Holiday Inn; Express by Holiday Inn; Holiday Inn Express; Staybridge Suites; Candlebridge Suites; Intercontinental Hotels and Resorts and ANA Hotels in Japan.

Fortunately the lovely people at Quidco offer a 5% discount, but you have to remember to go in via the Intercontinental Hotels Group link. http://www.ichotelsgroup.com You then have to log into your Priority Club account before you start searching out hotels and making a reservation. So it is a little bit more of an effort than say, making a booking on the Hilton website, but despite this - everything registers with Quidco so no problems there.

I decided to book a room at the Express by Holiday Inn Glasgow Theatreland. One weekday night bed and breakfast in a twin room was £79 - a best flexible rate. With 5% cashback, this works out at £75.05, not too bad for a last minute booking. The reservation process went through OK and I received my email confirmation immediately. http://www.hiexpressglasgow.co.uk/ interesting to see they have won awards from the Intercontinental Hotels Group.

Location:

First thing you have to remember is that the Express by Holiday Inn and the normal Holiday Inn are on the same street, just a few buildings apart. It was bucketing down with rain when I got off the train at Glasgow Queen Street, so I took a taxi and you will need to make sure the driver knows exactly which of the two hotels you want.

As far as location goes, you couldn't really wish for a better choice. As the name implies, the hotel is very near the Theatre Royal, and the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall is literally just around the corner. Sauciehall Street is just a little further down the same road, with the new Buchanan Galleries complex also in the near vicinity, numerous eateries are nearby and it is only a short walk to Queen Street Station and there are loads of bus-stops near by not to forget the famous "Clockwork Orange" underground railway - the 3rd oldest such transport system in the world. So no problems with location. Parking is available through the hotel at £10 a day, but I am infomed you can park cheaper in the nearby carparks.

Check-in:

The hotel lobby is small but attractive with a long glass window giving lots of natural light and some greenery making the area welcoming. There is the usual display of helpful material about Glasgow and surrounding areas. Arriving at just after 2pm there was no queue and I immediately noticed a form with names of expected Priority Club guests on the counter - so I was able to say "That's ME!" (Not particularly confidential way of doing things if you were on a dirty weekend or the like, perhaps... not that I have ever done anything like that, oh no... The receptionist dealt with my check-in quickly and efficiently and as he handed over my card key asked me if I had been in the hotel before and then mumbled something about the lift. I was tired and also full of adrenaline due to seeing my best friend again, (a lethal combo for me) so didn't really take it in.

Anyway, as I got in the lift and pressed 4 for 4th floor - I froze in panic as nothing happened... All I needed was to be stuck in the lift with the rehearsal starting in 30 minutes. I tried again, still nothing and as I started to feel slightly hysterical, pressed the "open doors" button which fortunately worked and there was the receptionist standing with an: "Are you stupid or are you stupid?" type look on his face as he pointed to the very inobtrusive sign on the side of the lift saying "Insert and remove room card key before pressing required floor!!" Umm, OK, red face here. Doing as requested, lift worked just fine, I must write out 500 times "Listen to instructions properly." Mind you, if you were foreign it might also be a problem.

In a way, as a single female traveller this kind of security is a good thing, as it makes sure that only registered guests can access the bedrooms, but it did seem a bit of a fiddly system at the time, as you had to do the same thing coming down as well...

Room:

After that embarrassing little episode it was quite a relief to get to my room on the 4th floor. Card key worked and I have to say my first impression was "OH MY GAWD, who chose this colour scheme?" Bright orange bed coverings/upholstery and gruesome pus-like green carpet do NOT go well together. I could well imagine the lovely Colin and Justin (Scotland's most famous interior design duo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_McAllister_and_Justin_Ryan) having to have a lie down in a darkened room if they saw this colour combination!

However, in all fairness, apart from the colourings, I was impressed by the size of the room. I would say it was about 3m by 4m and there was adequate room for 2 people to co-exist happily. There was a desk area, tv, bookcase containing Bible and interesting book about Glasgow. Two single beds, non moveable, plenty of natural light from windows, nice big TV with usual channels including Sky News, CNN and pay per view stuff which I didn't use. Internet access was available but seemed to be around £10 for a day which is a lot. Hairdryer was provided, but a very basic one, there was no wardrobe but a rail with plenty of hangars. Tea and coffee facilities were also provided. There was also a sign saying you could order food from the Italian restaurant next door - DiMaggios - via a free internal telephone number - more on that later.

The bed was hard and unyielding, not my favourite kind of mattress, but it had a nice cosy duvet and firm pillows. Bathroom was fairly small, no bathtub, just a shower cubicle but with a power shower, separate room for toilet. No extra goodies, just these ghastly squeezy containers of Dove soap, which are hard to use if not very full (impossible I expect if you have arthritis...) The bath towel provided might have been adequate for a small child, but there were other towels and a couple of extra pillows provided too.

My usual hotel "cockroaches and crud check" proved negative and I have to say that cleanliness was excellent throughout the hotel.

Anyway, if you are spending a lot of time in your hotel room in Glasgow then I find that rather sad!

Hungry!:

After a truely wonderful concert and post concert chat with my friend, I decided to make use of the in-room service from Di-Maggios. I ordered an Americano pizza (salami and pepperoni) and it arrived promptly in my room less than 20 minutes later, absolutely delicious, piping hot and a real bargain at £6.95. Highly recommended.

Breakfast:

The Express by Holiday Inn chain is described as a "Limited Service" hotel and I think this was most noticeable at breakfast. The breakfast room is adequately sized and well set out, with a tv showing BBC News 24 and at least one didn't have to wait to be seated. Choice was OK, no hot cooked breakfast items but stuff like packaged cereals, small selection of yoghurts, jams, marmelade etc, some rather tired looking cold meats, but scrumptious fresh crispy croissants which were much larger and tastier than those I had the next morning at the higher rated Dundee Hilton (go figure...) It was perfectly fine for what it was.

Check-out:

Very quickly and professionally handled by reception staff, who also heped with information about my train to Dundee. Out of the hotel in less than a couple of minutes.

Conclusion:

If you are visiting Glasgow for shopping, a concert, or the theatre, then this is an excellent budget buy hotel. Spotlessly clean, well managed and with an exceptionally convenient location, if you accept the certain lack of choice at breakfast then you can't really go wrong. I'm giving it 4 stars in its category of budget hotels. Recommended.

© Maestrolover 

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