No room at the Lodge? (Travel Inn in general)

Name: Sarah_Louise

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Product:	Travel Inn in general
Date:	21/11/03 (548 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Dotted all over the country so you're bound to find one with vacancies, Simple booking and check out procedure, Works out reasonably priced if theres two or more of you sharing

Disadvantages: Noise of traffic in our particular room (but I've heard this is unusual), Only one pillow per person provided as standard in our room!

skip this first bit to be able to read the review with capital letters intact. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a. a.


a. a.
a. a. a. a.


It was way back in July, shortly after conducting an overnight investigation at one of the UK's most haunted locations, Derby Gaol, that we booked ourselves into going to what was set to be the biggest paranormal convention of its kind in the UK. And it's name? GhostCon. It was to be held in Nottingham, Bestwood Lodge to be precise.

A few weeks passed and our tickets arrived. We forgot all about it for the time being.

It was a couple of months later when I received an email from Jason Karl (presenter of Most Haunted, Strange but True, The Why Files, amongst many others). He was inviting us to do a talk at GhostCon. Excellent, we thought, it could only be good publicity for us. As no publicity is bad publicity we agreed.

However, with just over a month to go before the big event (over Halloween 2003 by the way) we realised we had a bit of a rush on to find accommodation. Being autumn/winter though we didn't think it would be too much of a problem. How wrong were we?! All the B&B's seemed to be fully booked!
There were vacancies at some of Nottingham's top hotels but when you're looking at £70+ per night they were well out of our budget (or certainly out of mine!)

We were left with just a couple of alternatives:

1. Sleep in the car - this was unpractical though, when we?re going on investigations and events around the UK we normally have 'the big gold fun bus' as we refer to it. In other words it's a land rover! However, having 5 in the car meant it would be a bit cramped! We were to be staying Friday and Saturday night. As our talk was at 10:30am on the Saturday morning we didn't want to appear like we'd just slept in a car all night!

So we struck that off our list.

2. A tent - same problems arise as with the car! That, coupled with the fact that we'd have had to trespass on some farmers land!
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3. And last, but by no means least, we're left with the alternative we went for - Travel Inn.

I'd never personally stayed in a Travel Inn before. A few members of the Committee had and had not really enjoyed their stays at them before so they were not looking forward to it!

However, my parents have stayed at a couple on occasion in the past and recommended them to me.


Just the week prior to Halloween my dad was on a course for work and stayed at a Travel Inn in Nottingham itself. It turns out there are three Travel Inn's in Nottingham. A city centre one, city South and one to the West of the centre.


So, whilst talking to some Committee members over MSN messenger it was decided we'd have to go with this alternative. If we didn't we'd look like we'd been dragged through a bush backwards for our talk and that would not look good!!


Off we scuttled to the Travel Inn website.
http://www.travelinn.co.uk.

(Which, incidentally, is generally very easy to use when its working, on a couple of occasions we had problems getting it to work but whether this was just a temporary hitch we don't know, it seems to be working ok now!)


We checked vacancies for Nottingham city centre, city South and West. By huge relief there were vacancies at the the City South one with the rooms we required. And, as it was a Friday-Sunday we got the reduced rate rooms (£49.95 per room, per night). So we booked ourselves into City South for the two nights. I personally didn't do the booking but from what I can gather it was all very simple. We placed a credit card on file and paid for the rooms on arrival all from the one card.


Choice of rooms is fairly standard but please note, they don't do single rooms. Now I don't know if this is nationwide or just Nottingham Travel Inn's but the other Travel Inn's my parents have st
ayed in don't appea
r to have single rooms either so I'm guessing it's a nationwide trend? However, there seems to be 'Single' options
when you go to the 'Online booking and check availability' link on the website. Just out of interest I just tried checking availability of one single room at a few Travel Inn's around the country for one night and on each occasion got a message saying:


'We're unable to fulfil your exact request at ???? Travel Inn. Below is the alternative we can offer. If this doesn't suit you, use the option at the bottom of the page to check availability at other nearby Travel Inns:

Room number: 1
Description: Double room'


This, again, leads me to believe they don't have single rooms. Surely they can't ALL be booked up!? It seems a bit daft to me though. Firstly, why not have single rooms, and secondly, if they don't do single rooms, why have that option on the online booking system at all? Anyway, back onto my stay.


You can therefore choose from double, twin or family rooms. This works out quite economical in that they charge you per room rather than per person. So for a Friday-Sunday stay at £49.95 this works out at £24.98 per person per night based on two sharing either a double or twin room. This meant I paid £49.95 for two nights. Which isn't too bad at all, although it did rock my bank balance a bit at the time! (Being a skint student!!)


So, Friday 31st October arrived. Off we went on our 4 hour journey to Nottingham. Nerves were starting to show a little as our talk loomed! On arrival in Nottingham we drove around the ring road a couple of times in the vain attempt to find the Travel Inn. We passed the Travel Inn West one and nearly pulled in until we realised we needed City South! Eventually we found it. Check in is a simple procedure, simply provide your name, address, telephone
number, etc. You're asked whether you want breakfast in the morning or not (usually about £5.00 depending on whether you choose continental or fully English style). We knew we'd not have time though so we didn't bother. Then you're asked to sign a form and that's it. You're given your key and left to it. (Incidentally, I've since learnt that this is unusual, you're usually given a key card with which to open your door apparently).


Rooms are easy to find as each corridor is labelled 'Rooms 1-10', etc. Our first job was to memorise which rooms our fellow Committee members were in. It turned out there were three floors to this particular Travel Inn and we were all on separate floors! Between us we'd booked two double rooms and one twin. Only one room was a smoking room - one of the double rooms. We desperately needed to have a run-through of the talk but also desperately needed to get to GhostCon itself. We were an hour late as it was due to our run in with the dreaded Nottingham ring road! So we scuttled to our relevant rooms, dumped our bags, grabbed our essentials (camera, torch, EMF meter, and other things essential to any paranormal investigator!) and then all met by the desk in the front lounge. Piled into the 'big gold fun bus' again and set off trying to find Bestwood Lodge. Despite having a map we found it very difficult to find this place!! However, with the help of Gareths (aka bujin) superb pathfinding skills we managed to arrive before midnight! Thank God our talk was on Saturday morning and not Friday night!


In theory, if you're to be arriving back at Travel Inn after midnight you're supposed to hand your key in at reception and then collect it again when you get back. We were in such a rush to leave though we completely forgot about this and darted out of the door without a thought about our keys!


As GhostCon included 'ghost hunts&
#39; we weren't back until about 1am. By which time we'd remembered about this key rule and tried sneaking in past reception hoping no
one would notice. There was one person behind the reception desk by they didn't say anything at all. Phew!


We desperately needed to have a run-through of our talk though so we all headed
up to the smoking double room on the third floor in which to have a practise run-through. We'd gone through the basics by 1:30am so as we had to be up relatively early the morning after it was time for bed.


Now we could finally inspect our room properly. (I'd not had chance earlier, merely dumped my bags!) The room was of average size, not too big, not too small. In the room there was the bed (no surprise there then!), usual two bedside tables, lamps, wardrobe, dressing table, wall mirror, a small table with 4 chairs around it, tea/coffee making facilities (with a few biscuits, only a few though so bring extra's if you're likely to get peckish!), spare towels and the all-important TV. There's a clock on the TV too which can be used as an alarm. (NB. remember to leave the TV on standby rather than turning it off completely if you're wanting the clock & alarm facility, something we forgot about and only remembered about when we'd got in bed, neither of us could reach it with our toes and we sure as hell couldn't be bothered getting up again so we used our mobile phones as alarm clocks instead!!)


Anyway, that's enough of the bedroom, now onto the bathroom. All Travel Inn rooms are en-suite. The bathroom was quite small but adequate. In it there was a bath (with overhead shower), sink and toilet. Also, a handy heated towel rail type of affair. One thing I did notice in the bathroom though was that the towels themselves were tiny. Really, they were. There?s no way you could class them as 'bath towels'. They were more hand towel
sized verging on face cloth/flannel size! Had I wanted to sit with a towel on my head if I'd had time to do such a thing after washing my hair rather than dar
ting out of the door in a mad rush I'd not have been successful. The towels were simply not of adequate size to wrap wrong long hair! You got two bars of soap and that's all. No shampoo, shower gel, shower caps or anything else you may associate with more e
xpensive, 'proper' hotels.


After having a high-speed wash, cleaning my teeth and doing my business it was time for bed.


The bed itself was relatively comfortable. I can't really fault the bed itself but we only had one pillow each. Now I'm used to two pillows so this was a bit annoying. I could have asked for another one at reception but at 1:45am when you're worrying about the dreaded talk you've got to present in the morning this wasn?t on the agenda!


I didn't sleep too well on Friday night. At the time I blamed it on the noise of traffic outside (that, and my boyfriend is a sheet nicker!!) This is the main flaw I found with Travel Inn to be honest. No, not that my boyfriend insists on having more than 50% of the sheets! But that the noise of the traffic outside could be heard outside. Despite closing the window (which was open on our arrival) you could still clearly hear it. It wasn't a Metro Travel Inn either (i.e. one right next door to a motorway). It was on a fairly busy road but far from being a main road. Yet it was still quite noisy.


Incidentally, the others thought the same too so it wasn't just me and the fact that I can never sleep well in a strange bed on the first night!


However, having since spoken to my parents, they've never had this problem, they've never been able to hear the traffic really, despite one of their stops being at one by a motorway. Perhaps they've had triple glazed
rooms? I'm not sure.


One nights 'sleep' over with and it was time to get up again before I knew where I was. We'd all agreed to meet in Reception at 8:45am. We ni
pped over to Sainsbury's to grab a bite to eat (or they did, I?m no a breakfast person!) And then hurried back to Bestwood Lodge to present our talk.


One talk out of the way we were at GhostCon all day through until gone 1am. At which time it was time to head back to Travel Inn again. And, again, we'd forgotten about our
keys! We sneaked in again looking sheepish, but, as with the night before, no one said anything. Being completely knackered this night, slightly more used to the one pillow situation and having no talk to worry about I got a much better nights sleep.


The morning after we simply had to hand our keys back in at Reception. No form filling to do or anything. All in all it's a very simple procedure. Unlike many hotels and B&B's you don't have to leave your room until midday so you can have a lie-in if you wish!


Like I say, we didn't have time to do any eating really barring dashing and eating on the go! However, all Travel Inns have a restaurant either incorporated into the building, or directly adjacent, which may be one from a selection of chains including Brewsters, TGI Fridays, GrillBar, Out 'n Out, or Brewer's Fayre, Beefeater, amongst others. Ours was a GrillBar but like I say, we didn't get chance to sample the food on offer here.


If you're to be staying in a Travel Inn, just don't expect luxuries. You get what you pay for. However, most people use Travel Inn's just for a night or two (like we did), in which case I see no harm in booking into a Travel Inn. I wouldn?t recommend them as a proper holiday accommodation if you?re predicting to spend any length of time in your room. But for the odd trip up and down the country th
ey are fine.


If you're on your own it's quite expensive for £49.95 for a room (unless some Travel Inn's do have single rooms?) but if there's two or more of you sharing it works out reasonable val
ue. All in all it worked out to be good value for us (as no one was staying in a room on their own).


If you're staying during the week you can expect to pay higher prices of £52.95 per room per night.


So, to conclude, would I stay at a Travel Inn again? Yes.
Would I recommend them? Yes.


All in all they get the thumbs up from me then!