I was bored one evening last week and as I sat flicking through a Travel Inn directory, I worked out that in the last ten years, I have stayed at over 30 different Travel Inns. After that sobering thought, you would think that I might have a few things to say about Travel Inns – and you’d be right.
THE CONCEPT
Whitbread Travel Inns were first set up in the 1990s, in a direct move to open up the hotel accommodation market. Working on the same simple principle as American motels, The Whitbread Group wanted to provide a chain of instantly recognisable hotels, where things were kept simple, functional and cheap. The concept has been a huge success with over 300 Whitbread Travel Inns now in operation and countless competitors such as Travelodge and Premier Lodge coming on to the market. Travel Inns are without a doubt, very consistent. Any praise or criticism that you may have of one hotel will almost certainly be mirrored in another.
THE BRAND
There are now three different varieties of Travel Inn.
Normal Travel Inns can be found at various locations around the country, normally adjacent to, or very near main roads and motorways. Each Travel Inn is located next to a Whitbread group restaurant – e.g. TGI Friday, Brewsters – and offers bed and breakfast for £42.95 per room per night. This is a considerable saving over most hotel chains, and is a standard price offered regardless of the time of year or day of the week. Most Travel Inns are realistically only accessible by car.
Travel Inn Metro is a relatively recent addition the range, and comprises 36 Travel Inn hotels, all located in city centre locations. The premise is fundamentally the same – they still have a Whitbread restaurant and fixed room rates – but due to the additional costs incurred in central locations, the prices are slightly higher. According to the specific location, Travel Inn Metros cost between £46.95 and £54.95 per night. The standard of fixtures and fittings in Travel Inn Metros is normally slightly higher than those of a normal Travel Inn. Some Travel Inn Metros are old Travel Inns that have been refitted to a slightly higher standard. Travel Inn Metros suit travellers arriving by train.
Travel Inn Capital comprises five additional Travel Inns, all located in the centre of London. Where real estate and costs are so much higher, you would expect to pay more than elsewhere in the country, but the room rates still only range from £69.95 to £79.95 per room, per night. The newer Capital Inns tend to be well fitted, but the older ones are much the same as a standard Travel Inn.
Although there are over 300 different locations, you can expect much the same thing wherever you stay. Rooms tend to be clean, functional and uncluttered. Furniture is modern but minimal and tends to comprise a double bed, small table and chair, desk, wardrobe and en-suite bathroom. The bedding provided is always a quilt, rather than blankets and sheets, which I personally prefer because you are guaranteed to have everything fresh, each time you stay. Popular with business travellers and group bookings, there is something very unloved about Travel Inn hotel rooms, and the evidence of late night parties is often very evident. To keep costs down, standards tend to be rather basic and Travel Inn rooms are not very homely or comfortable. The rooms are the perfect place for a base – somewhere to sleep and have a wash. If you’re looking for somewhere to spend longer periods of time, then Travel Inn is probably not for you. A number of the older Travel Inns are now starting to look a little worse for wear too and a refitting programme is probably necessary some time very soon.
A virtually essential pre-requisite for any hotel room for me is that it must have air-conditioning. Given that many Travel Inn hotels are in high rise buildings, the windows seldom open for safety reasons. As a result of this, Travel Inns can be deathly places if the air conditioning isn’t working and I would always recommend that you check this out before booking in the Summer or you could live to regret it. The only other problem is that the air-conditioning units tend to be quite noisy, so you can’t sleep with them switched on anyway.
FACILITIES
Once again, with cost in mind, Travel Inn hotel rooms are not normally very well equipped. They each have a small kettle and other tea-making equipment. Some hotels have trouser presses, but only the newer inns or Metros have their own telephones. Portable televisions are provided, but they tend to be quite small and they don’t offer satellite stations. One of the greatest downfalls of the Travel Inns is the hidden cost associated with telephone calls. My company has been encouraging us to utilise Travel Inns wherever possible, but we have since identified that this is not cost effective for guests who wish to use their laptops or make conference calls. Charged at around 20p per minute, phone calls are dialled up via a separate telephony provider and charged to your credit card. This can add a big cost to your stay. I recently stayed in a Travel Inn, and dialled up for about an hour and ten minutes – I was subsequently charged about £18 for the privilege, even though my dial-up number is 0800 free phone. For me, it is therefore more cost effective to stay in a more expensive hotel, where I can use the phone line for free.
Another disadvantage of not having a phone in all the rooms is that in the event you need to speak to reception, you have to physically go along and speak to someone. This can be a real nuisance. Imagine if you’ve jumped into the shower, and then noticed there are no towels (it happened to me!). I also find that false fire alarms tend to be quite frequent in Travel Inns – usually because the smoke detector is activated by steam from the bathrooms.
A good thing is the availability of a restaurant and bar within walking distance, with a good variety of different eating houses. The food is geared towards family diners, so don’t expect anything too sophisticated, but for a lone traveller, these places tend to be quite jolly and welcoming and you can sit quite inconspicuously and eat your meal. Room service is obviously out of the question, but some Travel Inns do have vending machines for drinks and snacks. In many ways, a lack of these facilities is a good thing – room service can be a tempting, but costly diversion.
BATHROOMS
Travel Inn bathrooms are average at best. Despite being located next to some fairly sizeable bedrooms, the bathrooms still seem unbelievably small, and they seldom have windows or any natural light. The noise from the fans carries from one floor to the next and I always find them dimly lit and gloomy. The fixtures and fittings are clean and durable, but there are no frills – the showers tend to be strong but can’t be adjusted in any way. The baths aren’t big enough for the average man and the toilets always seem too close to the wall. The greatest downfall of the Travel Inn bathroom must be the towels. Barely larger than an average hand towel, the bath towels are completely impractical and you end up using three or four just to get dry from one bath. I do wish somebody in the company would cotton on to this fact and supply proper bath towels. I suspect that the shitty towels are provided to discourage thefts – you might want to consider taking your own.
RESERVATIONS
Booking Travel Inn accommodation can be done via their web site, or via a central reservations telephone number. I find the web site quite useful for finding locations, but because cancellations or amendments have to be made through the reservations line I tend to make any bookings over the phone. If you do wish to cancel a reservation, you can do so up to 16:00 on the day of arrival – although I’ve cancelled later, and not been charged. Making a reservation at the actual hotel in person can be a shrewd way of making the booking, especially if there is a lot of competition in the area. I was offered a £10 reduction in Manchester, purely because things were quiet and the hotel next door was cheaper.
It always pays to reserve rooms as early as possible. Despite my many criticisms of Travel Inns, they do tend to fill up quickly. More and more business travellers are being asked to use Travel Inns, and in certain locations, a vacant room is like gold dust. These hotels are particularly susceptible to seasonal variations – Manchester Travel Inn was fully booked nearly a year before the Commonwealth Games started.
100% SATISFACTION – GUARANTEED?
This is a claim made by the Travel Inn group, who offer 100% satisfaction or your money back – a claim I have tested about half a dozen times. To give credit where it is due, on each occasion I was awarded a full refund, without quibble and was quite impressed. I’m surprised that more people don’t take advantage of this offer – you can get a refund for anything that fails to meet your expectations. (I once obtained a refund because the toilet seat came off in my hand). Such a compensation scheme does not necessarily guarantee good service though. Quite often, you will find the reception desk unattended, where the staff members help out in the restaurant. My award for the rudest staff goes to the Travel Inn Metro in Bristol, where the receptionists are consistently, unbelievably rude and unhelpful.
The rooms are not always comfortable either – hard, lumpy beds are common, as is noise pollution from outside. I don’t think that the Travel Inns are terribly well insulated from noise either. Doors seem to slam very easily and you can hear televisions in the room next door. Some of the main road locations are extremely noisy – especially if your room is at the front. One of the problems with having a restaurant next door is that they tend to be popular with non-residents. I was kept awake until 1 a.m. one night by a karaoke competition in the Beefeater next door. My favourite is when you can hear somebody above you “using the toilet”. Nice.
THE CURRENT MARKET
Travel Inns now have stiff competition. The most dangerous kid on the block is City Inn – another chain of economy hotels that still offers trendy, well-fitted rooms at cut-throat prices. City Inn makes Travel Inn look relatively shabby and I think Travel Inn probably needs to review what it does. You can’t argue with the principles of no frills and basic prices, but sometimes I think that Travel Inn has cut back too much. As I am often away on business on my own, I want to stay in a hotel where I do not feel isolated and where there are at least a few comforts. I hate the bathrooms and generally accept that I will either roast or freeze, according to the time of year. Those hidden telephone costs were the killing blow though and I’m afraid for me, Travel Inns are out.
Not recommended to business travellers Recommended for last minute, emergency stopovers. Not recommended for stays of more than one night in duration.
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