| Product: |
Travel Inn in general |
| Date: |
24/04/05 (378 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Clean, neat, comfortable, Nice breakfasts
Disadvantages: Middle of nowhere
--- Why Enfield?
Manchester to Enfield for a 9am start is just too horrible to contemplate, so when we had a trampolining competition there we decided to make a weekend of it, and booked into the Premier Travelinn next door to the venue for one night only. There were 13 of us so we rang in advance, booked several rooms and specified names and sleeping arrangements (twins / doubles / one single) prior to arrival. However, on getting there at around 8pm we were told that really we should have faxed this information through with a credit card authorization so they could have checked us in before we arrived. Since we hadn’t been asked to do this when we booked, we had to spend almost 30 minutes going through the usual name / nationality / number plate form filling formalities.
This kind of set the scene for the rest of the trip. The service was not especially bad, just a bit slow and at times un-knowledgeable – it took 3 of the reception staff to answer a simple question I had about breakfast.
--- Why here?
The hotel, neatly names the Premier Travel Inn Enfield following the merger of Premier Lodge with Travel Inn, is located on a business park in the middle of Enfield, with a pub next door and a McDonalds and Tesco 2 miles down the road one way, and other branches 2 miles down the road another. In short, there was nothing worth walking to within easy walking distance. Once inside the hotel you can begin to forget the surroundings and focus on what is right there – what is essentially a modern, plain motel with non-descript furnishings and minimal facilities. Beyond the two vending machines and leaflet rack, the hotel has only one extra to offer – meeting rooms for those strange enough to select it as a conference venue. The food on offer is courtesy of the attached Brewer’s Fayre, and is served all day though the main menu placed in each room is only valid after 6pm.
The hotel is normal and plain in all areas apart from the staircase which is actually a semi-external one with glassed walls offering views of the tiny bit of grass and long main road next door. Very silver and retro in an otherwise conservative, run of the mill place.
--- The rooms
The rooms themselves, or at least our 7, were all identical. Each had a double bed (nice for one person, ok for 2 and cramped for 3), plus a sofa that could convert into 2 single beds if needed: in the twin rooms we’d booked the top bed was made up ready, but in the doubles it wasn’t. There were also large beech desks with swivelling but small TVs and telephones, a hairdryer, bedside tables with those light switches that let you darken or brighten the entire room without getting out of bed and large doorless wardrobes. The ensuites were spotless, a mix of chrome, white and oak panelling, and had baths and overhead showers which though not power ones, were strong enough. The water was also controlled by one of those snazzy temperature dials so you could set it perfectly without fearing a hot or cold spurt.
The rooms were also well equipped for climate control, with tilting windows, inroom portable fans for placing where you wanted them, overhead vents for cooling or heating and digital temperature control to get the room to your exact specifications. Unusual, but welcome features for this sort of place. They came with quilts on the double beds, sheets on the single sofa beds and spare pillows and towels in the wardrobe, useful if you’re larger than a size 4, the size they obviously had in mind when specifying the tiny bath mat cum bath towels.
Freebies were average – miniscule bottles of purple ‘hair and body’ washes, and coffee, tea and biscuits. No sewing kits or writing paper or even free pens, though there was a feedback questionnaire if you had one of your own to use. The hotel is spread over 3 floors with about 40 rooms on each, and U shaped, so most rooms end up looking over the car-park. Overall, the hotel felt secure – lifts and stairwell doors were keycard operated, the corridors were equipped with numerous fire doors that reduced noise considerably and doors locked internally and had peepholes, though did not come with safety chains.
--- Eating and drinking
We ate at the pub next door, and enjoyed reasonable service and reasonable food for reasonable prices – around £7 for a main course, with starters and puddings from £3. The selection was fairly wide with good vegetarian choices, but it very much gave the impression and ready meals they heated up and then plopped onto a plate for you.
Breakfast was not included in the room rate, but could be bought for £5 or £7 depending on whether you opted for continental or full cooked. I went for the former and feasted for 45 minutes on croissants, toast, farmhouse bread, an assortment of jams and spreads, muffins of various kinds, cereal, fruit juice and yoghurt before I remembered I had to get on a trampoline and bounce in barely an hour. I quickly finished my mouthful, collected a few muffins and a box of cereal for later and took off back along the 30m path to the main hotel, being glad it wasn’t raining since this had a roof but no sides so would have provided little shelter in harsher weather conditions. Breakfast is one of my favourite meals as it’s the one I can eat what everyone else is having, so there was no way I was not going to try it, and I thought it was worth the money although given the numbers in the restaurant it wasn’t just the rest of our team who didn’t think it was worth getting out of bed for.
Breakfast is served from 6.30am weekdays and from 7am at weekends, and continues until 10 or 11 so even later risers could make it if they wished. Lunch is at lunchtime and evening meals start around 6 and continue until about 10.30pm, which we discovered moments too late when pudding time came, and had to nip out to the late night Tesco for provisions.
--- Overall
As a standard hotel it is lacking in service and amenities. As a glorified motel it gets the job done well. There are no swimming pools or shops or room service offers, but it is certainly a clean, modern, solid hotel for when you just need somewhere to lay your head for the night. At around £53 per room it is cheap for a family of 4 and not too bad for a couple given its proximity to London, but for that price, given it’s location in England rather than America, I have to dock a star for them not including breakfast. I don’t think you’d go out of your way to stop here, but if you were passing around bedtime, or knew you were needing an overnight in this area of the country, I would recommend it to you. Nicer than Days Inn and Travel Lodges, I’d say it probably does earn the ‘Premier’ in its title.
Find out more and book online at:
http://www.premiertravelinn.com/
You can also search by road / motorway name as well as postcode or town which makes an interesting change.
This individual branch of a larger chain can be found at:
Innova Park
Corner of Solar Way
Enfield
EN3 7XY
Tel: 0870 238 3306
Fax: 01992 707070
About 10 minutes from junction 25 of the M25 (easy to remember). If you pass one McDonald’s and hit another and a Matalan you’ve gone too far.
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