Travelodge: Never Again - thats Travelodgical

To be up front about this, my wife won this stay on twitter. OK, it cost us nothing but to my mind we are due at least as good a service as paying customers. Some might argue that for prize winners there should be that extra bit of care. It’s a thought at least..

We opted to arrive fairly early as our baby son has a habit of waking us early, hence we can be out on the road early. As it was we arrived at the hotel at around 10am having previously checked that it was ok to do so. We had been told that we could come into the (otherwise) private car park off at the back of the hotel in order to drop bags etc especially as we had an infant child with us. The car park is accessed through either a key or by pressing the intercom, we pressed and pressed for almost ten minutes, nothing. So we rang the hotel and advised them that we were there trying to get into the car park, a long ringing ensued before someone answered, we explained our situation and you could hear them turning the intercom on….suddenly it burst into life…. And the barrier lifted, Sorry we had to disturb whatever they were doing, that it was so important you turn the intercom off...

Whatever it was that they were doing then they had clearly gone back to doing it as we arrived in reception just moments later. No sign of anyone, completely abandoned, repeated presses of the bell had no effect. Eventually somebody arrived and we began the painful check in process. Our name? Sure we spelt it out. It’s not unusual but it’s a habit of mine to spell it out as some find my Yorkshire accent strong… No there was no record of any booking for us, rechecked the name, nope nothing, add first name, type of booking, no nothing. Did we have a confirmation we were asked, yes we do as we had chased up the hotel the day before for it. Ah she says when she sees the confirmation, yes we have it but tis spelt like this – yes I said, correctly, like I spelt it to you. How odd that I should know how to spell my own name. Recovering from the brink of despair, we asked if we could leave our bags,, yes we could although our room was ready so we could check in now – for £10. Either our room is ready or it’s not, why charge us for it but we said yes so we could get the little man’s cot set up etc..

We get to our sweatbox of a room, ok, the blistering heat of the day is not Travelodges fault but there is very very very little available by way of ventilation, certainly no air-con and ta-da certainly no cot. I won’t bore you with details but we had to ask 4 separate times for the cot, finally, 8 and a half hours after we checked in we get the cot, unceremoniously dumped on the floor by the member of staff as though it was a huge inconvenience. Well it obviously had been. Quite incredibly they even tried to make us change rooms to the one where the cot currently was rather that bring it down the corridor. Travelodge are by no means alone in this phenomena of not having a travel cot or similar actually in the room ready for you – despite it having booked weeks or months in advance, they just don’t seem able to do it. It does make me wonder exactly how they manage to run a hotel if such a simple task can not be carried out adequately.

We were in a family room, so Travelodge clearly feel for a family of three  that one bath towel and one hand towel is sufficient, let me tell you it isn’t. Bear in mind the rack rate for this room on this night was a stunning £165 that they could stretch to a towel each at least.

This is one of their much trumpeted recently refurbished hotels #travelogical they call it, a lick of paint, new bed and a new pic on the wall in corporate colours seem to be the extent of the refurbishment. A broken fan, well the fan worked but the top of it came off leaving the workings exposed, not entirely safe for any room let alone a family one with children. Yes the main beds have been upgraded, in truth, pillows and outrageous heat aside, it was a comfy night’s sleep,. I would pity anyone on the other bed in this family room, lumpy, hard and really not to be used as a bed, we used it as a bespoke sofa to watch the world’s smallest tv (slight exaggeration) on as it was just that bit nearer.

Her are a couple more quick tips that Travelodge could take on board to really help:

Pillows, most of us must have experienced the “one is not enough, two is too many” scenarios, too fluffy / thin / hard / soft – let’s get some different pillows not just 4 generic same plumpness ones.

Plugs – in many rooms, certainly this one, it’s hunt the plug socket, usually you end up unplugging something you need, like the fan or tv just to free up a plug to charge your phone. Why not a socket either side of the bed,  that would be #travelogical, most people use phones as alarms now and want to charge them overnight. Either way more than two sockets would really help.

Kettles, there is a growing trend for hotels so supply kettles with the shortest possible flex and Travelodge seem to have cornered the market. Just to illustrate this, they then put the kettle almost as far away as they can from the socket. In our room, due to the lack of plugs too, you had to kind of balance the kettle up on a ledge behind the tv, with the exposed electrics of the broken fan, it was the only way, only place you could plug it in. We all know electricity and water are good bed fellows, don’t we? That’s #travelodgical…. an accident waiting to happen

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