My weekends away with the girlies always have to be cheap affairs, so we usually end up staying in some dodgy B&B on Brighton seafront or the back roads of Great Yarmouth, but when I was booking our trip to Newcastle, I stumbled upon the Holiday Inn website, and bagged us a right bargain!

The price

We booked on the Internet a standard double room, which slept up to 4 people in 2 double beds. The cost of this room per night was £54.50. Which works out to about £14.00 each per night! Cheaper than most B&B's!

When we arrived at the Holiday Inn though, the price of this room was advertised as £155.00 per room per night. We queried this, and were told that our rate was the Internet rate, and as such we saved £100.00 per night!

So please, if any of you ever need to book a Holiday Inn, do so on the Internet and save yourself a fortune!

Location

The Holiday Inn Seaton Burn Newcastle, is situated about 6 miles out of Newcastle town centre, which works out at £10-£13 in a taxi. It’s also about a 10 minute drive to the airport.

The hotel itself is situated in acres of land, and has a nice quite, relaxed atmosphere.

The only things which are really in walking distance from the hotel, is a Little Chef, Burger King and a petrol garage which has a shop to buy sweets and your morning paper from. However, you can catch the bus from just outside the hotel entrance which takes your directly into town in about 15 minutes, and costs £1.50.

Rooms

Our room was on the ground floor, and had 2 large double beds, a coffee table with 2 chairs, a dressing table, a sideboard and a full-length mirror.

The en-suite bathroom had a bath with a shower in it, and a sink area with a massive mirror and spot lights (which show up every blemish you ever had!).

The room was equipped with tea/coffee making facilities, hair dryer, trouser press and dove shower gel and hand wash in the bathroom. We also had a TV, which had the 4 main channels and a selection of radio stations, and 2 phones. It is also worth noting that there is a bottle opener in the bathroom (well where else would you expect it to be?)

House Keeping

Everyday house keeping came into our room, made our beds, replaced the towels and restocked the teas and coffee's we had used. We had quite a late night one night, so we put our 'Do not disturb' sign on the door, and was impressed that we received a call at about 4pm asking us if we wanted house keeping to come in and make our beds for us yet.

Room service

24-hour room service is provided, although after 10pm the choice on the menu is very limited. You can basically have pizza or a sandwich. Through the rest of the day, they serve pastas, omelettes, curries and salads.

We ordered room service on one occasion at about 2am, and the food was brought to us in about 20 minutes. The cost of the sandwiches was £6.95, and the pizza £7.99, so quite reasonable! The food was hot and freshly prepared, and absolutely delicious!

Bar

The hotel had a well stocked bar too, which got very popular in the early hours of the morning once on the pubs and clubs in town had closed. We stayed up on the Saturday night until 6.30am drinking there, and it seemed that the bar closes when the last person has left!

The bar staff were all friendly, and happy to chat and suggest places were you can eat or drink in town, and places of interest that we didn't know about.

Health club

The hotel has its own health club, which is free to hotel guests. Their facilities include a medium sized swimming pool, spa, sauna, steam room and a gym with cardio equipment. There is also a weights room, which is situated in a different area of the hotel to other facilities.

Towels are provided for you, and the whole area is clean and relaxing, although its not exactly luxurious, its very basic, but clean and well equipped.

There is also a hair dressers and beauty theropists available at extra charges. You can have all over self tanning, massages, acrylic nails, your hair cut and coloured and so on. Although we did not use the facility ourselves, we looked at the prices and they all seemed quite reasonable. For example a full set of acrylic nails cost £30, and a 30 minute massage cost £25. Not the cheapest ever, but convenient and I'm sure very relaxing whilst your enjoying a holiday!

Restaurant

Although we never actually ate in the restaurant at the hotel, we had a look at the menu and there was a good selection, which was reasonably priced. On the Sunday we were there, they had a roast dinner, buffet style, for £10.95, and it looked lovely!

The set out in the restaurant itself is quite smart. Candles on all the tables, nice table cloths, napkins and silver cutlery. The atmosphere is relaxed and quite, with soft classical music playing in the background.

Reception / Customer Service

To me, the customer service is where this hotel really excelled! They simply could not do enough for you, from ordering you taxi's, booking tables, bringing buckets of ice to our room for drinks, or just taking the time to ask us about our stay and where we'd been with genuine interest, really made a difference to me.

We wanted to go to a quieter restaurant on the Sunday night and asked for a recommendation for the receptionist, who not only named a place for us, but said if we can wait for 10 minutes until he'd finished his sift, he'd drive us there.

Airport shuttle

As we were flying home from Newcastle early in the morning on Monday, we asked at reception if they could book as a taxi for 3.30am to take us. They went one better for us, and said they'd organise for their bus to take us there, free of charge, which is a service we hadn't heard of.

Vending Machines

For any of you's that get the munchies late at night like I do, there are 4 vending machines by reception that sell lots of chocolate, crisps and cans of drink. There is also an ice machine there, in case you fancy cooling your drink down, or chilling a bottle of wine.

Function rooms

Although we had no need to enquire, there was several function rooms available, which had business conferences being held in whilst we were there.

Local attractions

As well as having a busy town centre full of fantastic high streets stores, Newcastle's famous Metro Centre is only about a 15 minute taxi ride away, where you can shop to your hearts content

The nightlife in Newcastle is also fab! Trendy wine bars, themed beach bars, karaoke or a boat with a revolving dance floor - you can take your pick! There are also loads of nice restaurants in the town centre, and a cinema/bingo etc. so you really have no reason to be bored ever.

All in all this was a fantastic hotel. Clean spacious well equipped rooms, helpful staff, late opening bar, nice restaurant and a well-equipped health club. We really enjoyed our stay, and although I have never been to Newcastle before, I wouldn't hesitate in going back; the local nightlife is simply amazing!