Tripley and his Dirty Weekend away (Hotels in York in general)

Member Name: triplecthegame

Product:	Hotels in York in general
Date:	23/03/03 (353 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Security, Decent Rooms, Comfy Beds

Disadvantages: Dodgy Area, Staff ain't that hot

N.B. Once again theres no category for the Travel Lodge in Piccadilly in York so this un'll have to do.

Now I'll warn you now - I'm not the greatest of Hotel-Goers, I'm one where as long as there's a bed and a roof, I'm happy, but when she who must be obeyed and I decided to go to York for a few days (culminating in a good ole Paddy's Night P**s-up) it was obvious that it had to be a decent hotel - and with it being short notice - the only half decent hotel with vacancies was the Travel Lodge on Piccadilly, so of course - a booking was made and before you knew it I was destined to spend 4 nights there.

** Booking Process **

All done online at http://www.travellodge.co.uk, which is an easy enough site to navigate thats not too displeasing on the eye - all you do is pick which branch you want to visit by searching for the Town Name or Postcode of the area you're going to stay in, then add details of what type of room you're wanting and it'll throw back details of what they can offer you, but heres where my first qualm came - it came back with about 6 choices - but there was only actually 3 different ones to choose from - basically they'd replicated each choice on the page - but thats only a minor thing, once you've chosen your room you just put the usual contact details in before giving them your Credit Card details so they've got something to match the reservation against, within a few minutes of clicking submit you'll get your confirmation e-mail and you're away.

** Location **

Hmmmm, well - on the first night when walking to the hotel I was confronted by a drunk and to be honest the area around the hotel didn't fill either myself or my girlfriend with much confidence of it not happening again - there's just an air of uneasiness there.

Having said that, once you know where you're going
you've only got a 5 minute walk to get into
the city centre and its as easy as leaving the hotel and following your nose, and if you're walking from the Train Station then make it a 15 minute walk or a couple of quid in a taxi.

** Staff and Service **

On arrival the check-in was easy - all I had to do was hand over the credit card I booked with and pay the full fee on arrival (which for 4 nightas in a double room came to £239.80 - aka £59.95 a night) and I was immediately given my pass-card to get into the room.

On finding a fault with the TV in our room, I immediately headed downstairs to get it sorted, and to be honest I had to fight a bit to get someone to come up to the room with me and check the TV, however it was eventually sorted almost immediately.

Now on checking in they claimed that there was 24 hour cover on Reception - but there were plenty of times both myself and my girlfriend noted that there was nobody to be seen on the counter, not exactly 24-hour cover eh?

** Security **

This is where the hotel excels itself, to get into the hotel you have to either have a pass-card or talk to staff on the inter-com and get them to let you in, always a nice feature.

However if you get past the front door you've then got the lifts to conquer - if you don't have a pass-card, you ain't using the lifts - and even then you're only allowed to go to your designated floor, once again its a great way to stop intruders getting anywhere near your belongings.

** On-site facilities **

There's a cash-machine but be warned, you'll be charged £1.65 per transaction, there's a small selection of ice-creams and general products (painkillers, toothpaste, soft drinks, sweets, etc) at the reception but we never used this facility so I couldn't really comment - on top of that theres a Weatherspoons attached to the hotel as well - its the same as all other Weat
herspoons Pubs, cheap beer, average decor,
the usual guff, and finally the telephones - you don't have them in your room - but theres a pay-phone on the ground floor - so you'll either have to take your mobile with you (like I did) or use that instead.

** Rooms **

Well I'm impressed - as with most hotels you'll find you have 2 sections to your room - a bathroom, and the bedroom - in the bathroom you'll find all the normal facilities and it has to be said that the showers pretty nifty - the water does come out at quite a pace and if you want to change it to 'massage' settings by all means go for it - but its attached to the wall so instead of moving the shower itself you've got to move your own body - but thats nothing major and theres always a steady flow of hot water, so theres nothing to complain about, add on that there was a heated towel-rail in the room as well and you can safely say I was happy!.

The Bed itself it has to be said is extremely comfy except for one bit - the headboard, it probably sounds like nothing but the amount of times I was banging my head against it was scary - saying that my girlfriend had no troubles at all - so its probably my own fault for being a tall git.

Apart from that it was just the average niceties of a TV with all analog channels and BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, 4 - the reception on all of these was fine no matter what time we sat watching TV or listening to the Radio.

There was also facilities to make yourself a coffe or a tea if you wanted (milk, sugar, etc) along with general toiletries in the bathroom, but shockingly there was no tooth-paste (so guess who got sent to Sainsburys to get some - moi!).

Finally of course we had an experience of how the cleaners sorted the room for us, whenever we came back from a day out you'd find that everything was changed (sheets, towels, drinks facilities, cups) and the one day that we were still in there
they left all our new linen, etc in a
bag hung on our door-handle.

** Over-all **

For a few nights stay to be honest apart from the problems with Reception and Location you can't fault the Travel Lodge in Piccadilly, there were no major problems encountered and you always felt pretty secure because of the security in place (pass-cards, intercom, etc). So if/when I go to York for another holiday (I may be moving there anyway) I wouldn't hesitate in considering the Travel Lodge for another stay.

Summary: