Absolutely. You can't possibly be getting your money's worth unless you actually eat all 3 platefuls
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Budget hotels discussion
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Peter Sarf
Established Member
One of my stepsons is obsessed with all you can eat buffets. First it was Cosmo now its JRW Global Buffet. He likes the fact he gets it for free on his birthday. So the whole family cough up £35 (last time iirc) a head to join him and over eat. Last time he starved himself for about 24 hours before. He wolfed food down, family reckon I slowly ate much more than him. When we got home he convulsed it all up into the great white telephone
.Sometimes all the free extras just are not worth the bother and cost. So perhaps paying for what you actually need in a hotel room or plane is better.
cactustwirly
Established Member
These days the full service competition offer focus/select service too, Holiday Inn Express is a competitor of PI
Hampton is the biggest growing and most profitable part of Hilton
185143
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I stayed there in January. Found it pretty decent. As you say, clean enough and acceptable food and drink.
My only complaint was that the USBs by the bed didn't work... which I found out the hard way. I reported it to the front desk at check out and the lady behind the desk apologised and noted it, but wasn't confident anything would be done, pointing to the mop buckets on the floor collecting dripping water from the roof!
nanstallon
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I've booked Holiday Inn, Taunton for a Friday night for £82.45 for a twin bedded room. Swimming pool available, not bad at all.
Baxenden Bank
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I think it depends how far down that route they go.
Just pay for the bricks and mortar plus furniture. That's all some people need (a very small percentage) so that could be the base price with anything else attracting an additional fee, pre-booked from a menu when booking or metered as you go. Hair dryer, air-con below 19 degrees, heating above 19 degrees, extra TV channels, basic TV channels, towels, tea and coffee, room servicing other than between guests?
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Only if you want a swimming pool though. Otherwise you're paying that little bit extra on the room rate for a facility you won't use.
m0ffy
Member
It’s a decent enough hotel with very good staff. You will be asked if you work for a particular local employer if you dine in the restaurant.
Steddenm
Established Member
HI Express are part of InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) are they not?
I've noticed Hilton recently must be struggling a bit. I had an email from their Honours loyalty scheme saying if I book a Saturday night, I'll get a free Sunday night, breakfast and dinner on both nights. I checked to book and the "offer" price as £541 for Gateshead, yet booking two nights without the offer was £153 without breakfast or dinner.
Kite159
Veteran Member
..
Is that the one pretty much nextdoor to Torre station?
I was looking forward to trying Travelodge breakfast during my stay this week but typically my plans changed at the last minute so I was away from my room during the mornings so never got chance to try! (I did notice a notice in the lift however that rather than the usual buffet that things would be cooked to order as it was the quieter season...makes sense as this was in Blackpool just before the season started this weekend!)
I've never had any major issues with Travelodge, and they do seem to keep catching up with the likes of Premier Inn bit by bit (the idea of them serving breakfast in years gone by was basically a bit of fruit and cereal with a croissant and juice in a box!), they must also do good business with their bar as I'm often advised at check in that it is open until 2am-4am! (some I've stayed in too also seem to offer pizza till a similar time)
Apparently something new they're trying out is you can order from the evening menu to your room too
I've never had any major issues with Travelodge, and they do seem to keep catching up with the likes of Premier Inn bit by bit (the idea of them serving breakfast in years gone by was basically a bit of fruit and cereal with a croissant and juice in a box!), they must also do good business with their bar as I'm often advised at check in that it is open until 2am-4am! (some I've stayed in too also seem to offer pizza till a similar time)
Apparently something new they're trying out is you can order from the evening menu to your room too
Willie Bee
Member
A friend recently went on a cruise and said he was shocked at the number of folk piling their plates high with food, leaving half it, then going back for more.
Had a good Travelodge buffet breakfast yesterday. Proper sized croissants too, not the comedy one inch versions. But, orange juice has been replaced by ‘orange with apple’ a really unnecessary bit of penny pinching by the bean counters.
185143
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Yes it is.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Premier Inn did that ages ago, claiming that there was a shortage of orange juice, funnily enough no trouble at all buying it in Tesco. It is indeed just penny pinching.
I do quite like mixed apple and orange, though, I usually mix it myself at such buffets!
Charging for air conditioning seems like something to look at. Not everyone needs a cold room in the summer, and when people do start roasting then I'm sure they'll pay a decent amount for it.
Get rid of the soap and shower/hair wash too. People can bring their own if they want to wash their hands or shower surely?
And towels... bed sheets...
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I'd pay extra for an opening window personally. You would need free opening windows to charge for aircon, though, you can't have a completely unventilated room, it could potentially be a Health and Safety issue in summer.
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I am surprised they haven't done this. Though the cost of provision must be fairly low in the dispensers.
Towels perhaps (hostels generally hire them out rather than providing free). Bed sheets are a hygiene issue as if they weren't provided some people would just sleep directly on the mattress. Though I do find that Travelodge are moving slightly upmarket with the newer rooms, so the only ones I'd see as likely to do this are Ibis Budget which are closer to a hostel in concept.
Baxenden Bank
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And their own towels, bedding and toilet roll. Perhaps even meter the water.
Personally I would rather not have an extensive list of priced add-ons, with the base price being set on the needs of an extreme minimalist. That just gives rise to 'friction' at the point of booking, then further 'friction' at the point of checking in when the poor harassed individual has to try and upsell everything. Are you sure three pieces* of toilet paper are sufficient sir? 1p each now, 10p each if you change your mind in the morning.
I don't fly so cannot really comment on the airline experience but they do seem to be a tangled web of unexpected charges for absolutely everything which many people would regard as basics. Ibis had that for extra TV channels (when I used them a good few years ago). Often 'fast' Wi-Fi is a chargeable extra.
*old army saying: one up, one down, one polish.
Not sure I want hotels becoming more like hostels, but we can see it's happening gradually (boiled frogs).
By all means build more hostels and maybe even more capsule hotels for those who want the absolute cheapest - but let's stop the race to the bottom for regular rooms where people have (or had) certain expectations.
I was being somewhat hyperbolic with my examples but there really are people who would willingly give up loads of things to supposedly save money, when of course the prices don't come down - the things they used to get free are charged on top.
By all means build more hostels and maybe even more capsule hotels for those who want the absolute cheapest - but let's stop the race to the bottom for regular rooms where people have (or had) certain expectations.
I was being somewhat hyperbolic with my examples but there really are people who would willingly give up loads of things to supposedly save money, when of course the prices don't come down - the things they used to get free are charged on top.
On the flip side, some things which are included as standard are not all that useful to many people.
Wifi? Mobile phone with data plans are cheap in the UK. Fair enough somewhere where mobile signal is poor, but I don't find it that common. I can't remember when I last used hotel wifi.
Breakfast? Nice for those who love a fry-up, but there is a generation of healthy eaters coming up and having the equivalent of idk a £10 buffet breakfast included when all you want is muesli and a coffee feels like subsidising those who want a full English.
There will always be hotels who include these things for those who want that sort of package, but I don't see the harm in diversifying the offerings so those of us who don't want wifi, big breakfasts, or a 'complimentary' cookie on arrival have the choice of somewhere comfortable but without the unnecessary extras we don't want to pay for.
Lewisham2221
Established Member
Horses for courses I guess. If I'm staying at a City Centre location, all I want is a clean, basic room. Basically bed (with bed linen), shower room (with towel and toilet roll), electric socket for charging my phone. Don't even need housekeeping if I'm only there for a few nights. I'm there for the city, not the hotel room. I appreciate that's not to everyone's taste, but I'd much rather have the bare bones for a rock bottom "headline" price, because that's generally all I want, with any extras charged on top.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
I prefer not having housekeeping during a two night stay. It's invasive and they invariably come at an inconvenient time e.g. when having popped back for a shower or something.
Ditto. I always put the sign out for no cleaning/do not disturb please. I prefer having my own space.
Some hotels have a policy of cleaning at least once a week or something regardless, which is a reasonable policy imo.
jon81uk
Member
Travelodge didn't use to provide shower gel, if you didn't bring your own you had to buy it from the vending machine in the lobby. Not sure if it was the same with Premier Inn.
That was back when little bottles were standard at most hotels, whereas many have moved to dispensers as cheaper and produces less waste from half-used product and the plastic bottles.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
This is less about cleaning and more about inspecting the room to make sure it isn't being misused in some way / the occupant hasn't passed away or become seriously ill.
Breakfast is nearly always an add-on, but there are at least rooms advertised with it included so it's clearly advertised and easy to compare with other hotels/rooms.
Wi-Fi is not something I use, but I think people from abroad that don't necessarily have any/much roaming data value it - and I have stayed in rooms with no signal from my carrier. Can you ask to move room if one on the other side has coverage? Hotels sometimes have very small windows so signal can be extremely variable.
As I said, you aren't getting money off by not having such 'luxuries'. The room didn't get cheaper. They just made you pay for things you used to get free.
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
Pretty sure PI have always provided it in some form.
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This isn't universally true and is quite cynical. If you look at flights, in real terms they are much cheaper now than 40 years ago. In practice what has happened is that economy back then has become premium economy now, and economy/low cost has been inserted underneath. Budget hotels are similar, in a PI you get a room that's around the standard of the ones you got in somewhere like a Marriott, just without the extra stuff like a pool and gym and without a Corby trouser press (did anyone ever use one of those?) and you pay less than you would at the Marriott, offers aside.
Obviously you don't get a £10.99 discount for breakfast being taken out, as not everyone would previously have it - the old inclusive price would be based on only a proportion of people bothering. There are plenty of people who never eat breakfast even if it's free.
jon81uk
Member
You often are though, most of the reson places like Travelodge exist is they are priced low and didn't offer the luxuries the bigger hotels did.
They are more simple rooms for sure, but they're hardly as cheap as they were - or it's certainly harder to find the cheap deals. At least one budget hotel got into trouble recently because they advertised rates that were exceptionally rare, either hard to find at a particular hotel or perhaps not available at some hotel locations at all (I forget the finer details and can't link to anything).
Bletchleyite
Veteran Member
It would be true to say that when something is taken out as an extra prices don't typically drop, but that's because of inflation. The prices won't go up quite as much as they would have done if the extra had remained part of the offering.
See also "shrinkflation" - reducing the product is an alternative to increasing the price if you calculate that you will lose too many sales if you put the price up.
It's a balance.
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Yield management has become more effective in pretty much every industry. When the low cost model started off, it was something like "first room £1, last room £150" or something like that, with the quotas pretty much fixed. Nowadays software doesn't just predict the curve of price increase but also a sensible starting rate, so you are far less likely to see the bargains you used to get if you booked ages in advance, and it adjusts based on various factors as they go along, too. That's true of rail too - if you look at the LNER fare increase trial there actually isn't that much of an increase from say 2-3 weeks in advance to the day of travel.
See also "shrinkflation" - reducing the product is an alternative to increasing the price if you calculate that you will lose too many sales if you put the price up.
It's a balance.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Yield management has become more effective in pretty much every industry. When the low cost model started off, it was something like "first room £1, last room £150" or something like that, with the quotas pretty much fixed. Nowadays software doesn't just predict the curve of price increase but also a sensible starting rate, so you are far less likely to see the bargains you used to get if you booked ages in advance, and it adjusts based on various factors as they go along, too. That's true of rail too - if you look at the LNER fare increase trial there actually isn't that much of an increase from say 2-3 weeks in advance to the day of travel.
Yeah absolutely.
It is now, but that's the point, it never used to be. A 'bed and breakfast' was as it said on the tin and it was assumed everybody would want some fried food in the morning and it was just part of the price. We've moved away from that approach to one where it's an add-on because people want choice and flexibility.
Sure there's a case for tourists, but they have for a long time had the choice of paying for wifi, getting a local SIM, using their roaming allowances. These days you can actually just get a dirt cheap e-SIM the minute you land in the country or even beforehand. It was about £15 for me to get a 15GB e-SIM which lasted for 30 days in Pakistan.
But you are, because if they didn't remove things which were previously 'free' or 'complimentary', they'd raise the prices of the rooms instead. It's like chocolate bars getting smaller - either they make them smaller, or they make them more expensive. Arguing for them not to be made smaller won't prevent them becoming less value for money.