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Grandparents Go Free At Elite Hotels This Summer

Where: Luton Hoo Park, Luton, United Kingdom, LU1 3TQ

It’s not often we hear about offers for the older generation (everyone seems to be up for offering the kiddies to stay for free), so we’re quite tickled with this offer from Elite hotels.

Book the Grandparents Stay Free package and, as it suggests, you can bring along the grandparental folks for free until the end of August.

This sounds great, because the country piles in this group (Tylney Hall, Luton Hoo and Ashdown Park Hotel) would go down ever so well with the older generation. But here’s the bad news: it’s only really worth it for those with kids. Because you get two rooms – one for the grandparents, and one for the parents and kiddies to share – and we would venture that a weekend away is the one time parents wouldn’t want to share a room with the kids. Then again, maybe there are some people who take the whole family-minded thing more seriously than their sex lives. Well done.

Anyway, you can bag the two rooms for two nights for £760 ($1255), including dinner for the parents on both nights. The gramps can probably eat the free biscuits in the room, presumably – they’re not paying, after all.

[Photo: Wedding Venues]

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Pop the Cristal and Get a Free Room at Elite Hotels

Where: The Mansion House, Luton, United Kingdom, LU1 ETQ

We’re getting used to hotels pumping out discounts and throwing extra goodies our way to get us to stay with them this year, but giving a room away for free? That’s taking it one step further.

Chi-chi UK chain Elite Hotels, which owns four sprawling countryside mansions in the south east of England including Luton Hoo (where such luminary films as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Eyes Wide Shut were filmed) is doing just that.

You have to spend a wedge to get the free room, of course; £278.50 (about $413) on a bottle of Louis Roederer Cristal 2002, to be precise. But then, there are worse things to throw your money at. Especially if you go for Luton Hoo, where rooms cost £275 and up in the first place.

The offer runs through the whole of February, excluding Valentine’s night – but if you cough up for the 14th and promise to buy the Cristal too, they’ll throw in an extra night for free.

And just think – if your loved one thinks you splashed out on a room fit for Hugh Grant as well as some rap-tastic bubbly, just how many brownie points will you have? (Don’t worry, they didn’t film the Eyes Wide Shut orgy scene there.)

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Movie Set Hotel :: The Luton Hoo in "Four Weddings and a Funeral"

Where: Luton Hoo Park, Luton, United Kingdom, LU1 3TQ

The Luton Hoo Hotel in England doesn't have this name just to inspire bad "Luton Who?" jokes. Apparently "hoo" means "hill" in old Saxon so really it's the plain old Luton Hill Hotel. But it's got a great selling point that it was one of the reception venues in Hugh Grant's Four Weddings and a Funeral--we definitely want to tread in Hugh's footsteps.

The UK Independent reviewed the Luton Hoo recently and had mostly positive feedback to give. It's only been a hotel for a short time, after being a neglected private house for many years, so most of it's newly renovated--although 1980s touches like peach-colored paint, weird stripes and gold taps remain, which we're not too keen on.

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Checking In With the Hotel Chain for the Cheap-o

Where: 40A Guildford Street, Luton, United Kingdom, LU1 2PA

It's been a while since we last took a look at easyHotel, the European lodging chain for the incredibly frugal-minded.

The nearly three-year-old chain now has properties throughout London, as well as Budapest, Basel and Zurich. Its latest hotel opens today in Luton, featuring special opening rates of $39.45.

Before you rush to book that darling rate, remember the adage that "you get what you pay for." In this case, the attractive price at this 58-room hotel in Luton's city center does not include use of a TV, towel changes, Internet access or housekeeping services--all things that require you pony up anywhere between $2 and $20 to use.

It's all part of the master plan by the singularly monikered Stelios, easyHotel's chairman, to appeal to the cost-conscious--fine, we'll just say it: cheap--traveler. With the launch of easyHotel Heathrow later this summer, the company will continue to focus on establishing hotels near airports, with more properties appearing throughout Europe and the Middle East in 2009.

Photo: [Another Sarah]