Not sure I like Travel Lodges any more even at £9 night

andyrules

Tim - what difficulties have you had with HI site? I've generally found it fine and the nice thing about HI, over TL and PI, is that it has proper twins, rooms with 2 single beds instead of a king sized bed and sofa.

I have recently come up against enormous problems with the new TL site - 'ring-fencing', group bookings disappearing and re-appearing, group bookings showing more expensive than the one-room-at-a-time-route... The poor contact service is off-putting too.

I've used Innkeeper too, they are a nice chain, clean and fresh rooms, generally off city centre though, and their website is quite poor.

bundly

"group bookings showing more expensive than the one-room-at-a-time-route."

That happened to me when I tried 4 nights at Uxbridge. They were 19, 29 and 39, but when booked together all came up as 39!

andyrules

bundly wrote: »

"group bookings showing more expensive than the one-room-at-a-time-route."

That happened to me when I tried 4 nights at Uxbridge. They were 19, 29 and 39, but when booked together all came up as 39!

Yes, and if you want a group to stay together it's risky (and painful!) to book them individually - especially on saver rate.

Tim_Deegan

andyrules wrote: »

Tim - what difficulties have you had with HI site? I've generally found it fine and the nice thing about HI, over TL and PI, is that it has proper twins, rooms with 2 single beds instead of a king sized bed and sofa.

I have recently come up against enormous problems with the new TL site - 'ring-fencing', group bookings disappearing and re-appearing, group bookings showing more expensive than the one-room-at-a-time-route... The poor contact service is off-putting too.

I've used Innkeeper too, they are a nice chain, clean and fresh rooms, generally off city centre though, and their website is quite poor.

I plan my drivers routes using microsoft route finder, and use post codes. So I will often enter the post code of the last drop for each day to find the nearest hotel. You used to be able to do this with HI, but you can't now, so you have to use the town. This is ok if there aren't 2 or 3 towns with the same name. So it just involves a lot of messing about.

Last night I was searching for a hotel near Woking. So I did the search and top of the list was a HI in London at £129 (even though there were about 6 closer). So I tried to narrow the search to HI Express only to get the price down, but it came up with exactly the same results.

BillTrac

I stay away quite a lot through work, all over UK. I book the lodgings and claim back so choice is totally up to me. Dont feel the need to over indulge etc.

I always used to look at TL first because all I wanted was a base, somewhere to have a bath and sleep. But after several poor experiences looked elsewhere and have been staying at Premier and apart from one slightly uncomfortable nights sleep ( which they refunded fully immediately after I e-mailed them with some post-visit suggestions (all very civil I must add) I find them clean, comfortable and there is always somewhere adjacent to eat, and the full english breakfast in the morning is a good start to the day.

Having said that of course no-one else can tell you if the experience will be the same for you, you might expect more/less/different. If you are happy at TL then continue if not try somewhere else

vikingaero

I think the major problem with TL is historic. They were the first on the market and sited a lot of their motels next to existing Little Chefs. Having them next to Little Chefs doesn't always mean that they are ideally placed. I prefer the location of PIs on the outskirts of a town rather than on a noisy dual carriageway in the middle of nowhere.

As a large % of TLs are old so they have inadequate noise insulation by todays standards. Also there are plenty left with original fixtures and fittings that haven't been updated.

There also seems to be a culture problem at TL. I've stayed at a few TLs on opening night and they only have one receptionist trying to blunder their way through new systems. At PI when I have stayed on opening night there have always been 2 or 3 receptionists on duty, an IT guy hovering in the background and several managers helping to make sure things run smoothly.

bundly

andyrules wrote: »

Yes, and if you want a group to stay together it's risky (and painful!) to book them individually - especially on saver rate.

Strange thing to say. I did it yesterday, no pain and no risk.

bundly

I'd happily stay at a Premier Inn if I could pay £29 or £39 and be in central London.

andyrules

bundly wrote: »

Strange thing to say. I did it yesterday, no pain and no risk.

How could you be sure there would be the rooms you want at the end of the booking? Especially if you have multiple days as well.

chickmug

https://www.travelodge.co.uk/mobile/

Just found the link that someone gave in a posting a long time agio. This is the one though which I booked all my TL £9 rooms, when they have a sale and the main web site freezes up which it does.