When looking for a hotel to stay in for my recent trip to Edinburgh to take part in the marathon, I wanted something that was both central and also reasonably priced. This proved to be quite a hard combination to find as Edinburgh, like most major cities is quite an expensive place to stay for the weekend. Most of the hotels that I priced in Edinburgh, were coming in at way over £200 for the two of us for two nights which was a bit more than we were looking to pay in this instance.
I then stumbled accross the Travelodge website where I found out that there was a Travelodge in the centre of Edinburgh. The hotel was about half the price of the others and having stayed in other Travelodge hotels in the past which were reasonable, I booked this hotel.
*****LOCATION*****
The Edinburgh Central Travelodge hotel is in an excellent location in the
centre of Edinburgh. The marathon was starting in Princes Street which is the main street in the centre of Edinburgh so ideally I wanted to be as close to this as possible. The Travelodge is 1/2 a mile from Princes Street so about a ten minute walk which suited me perfectly.
Other places of note in Edinburgh include the Royal Mile which is only 100 yards from the hotel, Edinburgh Castle 1 mile away and Edinburgh Zoo which is 5 miles from the Travelodge Central.
*****PRICE*****
For two nights stay in a double room in the Edinburgh Central Travelodge the price was going to be £110 room only. I noticed that the double room didn't include a bath, which I reckoned was going to be necessary for after the marathon, so I phoned and upgraded the room to a family room which brought the price up to £130 for the two night stay on a room only basis.
*****ARRIVAL/CHECK-IN*****
We were told by the hotel staff that upon arrival at the hotel to press the information button at the car park and they would let us in. After fifteen minutes of sitting at the car park entrance pressing the button we had to phone the hotel to ask them to open the gate to the car park and let us in. At this point the staff informed us that the car park was full, although we could clearly see that at least a quarter of the car park was empty. They then eventually opened the gate and let us in.
The check-in process took quite a bit longer than we would have expected, as the staff seemed to be a bit stressed out and under pressure. Maybe with all the people who were staying at the hotel for the marathon they were busier than usual, although they should have known how many guests they were expecting.
The room was payabe on arrival at which point we were given our key to the room and a printout of our bill.
*****ROOMS*****
The room that we had at the Travelodge was a family room and was quite basic as you would expect. The room had a double bed, a couch, tea and coffee making facilities and a remote control TV which in our case only had BBC1, BBC2, ITV and channel 4 although you had the option to pay £6 per day if you wanted movies. There was no hairdryer in the rooms, my wife had taken her own as she had phoned the hotel to check if they had any.
The bathroom was quite basic as well although the power shower was very good. We had read before we went that the hotel only had basic toiletries in the rooms, which we found amounted to one very small bar of soap.
Another problem that we had was that there were no towels in the room and it took six hours and four requests before we were eventually given some towels at 9pm.
*****EATING & DRINKING*****
The only time that we ate at the hotel during our stay was the morning of the marathon. This cost £4 each and was buffet style including tea and coffee, orange juice, toast, cereal, fruit and yoghurt. I think that there was meant to be porridge on the go as well although they didn't have this ready when we were there.
You could also order food later in the day including paninis at £4.95 each or main meals like fish & chips £6.50, steak pie £7.95 or pizza £6.50. We ate out while we stayed here so we didn't try any of this.
There is also a small bar in the Travelodge selling the usual alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.
*****CONCLUSION*****
I think with this hotel it was a bit of getting what we paid for. The hotel had a lot of downsides which is probably why the price is so low compared to the other hotels in the area, although I think the one thing that they should have made sure of was having towels in the room.
A plus point for them was that on checking out of the hotel they did not charge us the £10 that was due for two days parking as a way of saying sorry for the lack of towels.
This hotel was suitable for my needs as it was so close to where I needed to be for the marathon, but if I was going back to Edinburgh I would definitely pay a bit extra to stay elsewhere.
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Jun 17th, 2006
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