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Tags: Ibis Hotels / Hotel Openings / Hong Kong Hotels / → All Tags

Hong Kong is Getting A Really Big Ibis Hotel

Not content with having one hotel in Hong Kong, the Ibis Hotels chain are preparing to build their biggest hotel in Asia in central Hong Kong. They say that the downtown area – the hotel will be built on the corner of Bonham Strand West and Des Vouex Road West, if you know the spot – is lacking in decent economy-level hotels and the Ibis should be the perfect fit.

Come early 2012, the Ibis Hong Kong Sheung Wan should be ready for plenty of guests with its 550 rooms, along with a restaurant and bar. An Ibis hotel rarely costs an arm and a leg so it might be worth looking into with that central location.

Ibis is having a big push of building and opening new hotels across Asia, and by the end of this year will have opened 21 new places across the Asia Pacific region, a big proportion of them in China. Considering that Ibis is not a very well respected brand in Europe--they were found "unfit to lick"--we hope they fare better in Asia.

[Photo: das farbamt]

Tags: Budget Hotels / Ibis Hotels / Etap Hotels / Golden Tulip Hotels / Travelodge Hotels / Holiday Inns / Hotel Hell / → All Tags

The Five Worst Budget Brands In Europe

You’re headed to Europe and despite all the talk about airline deals, getting there has eaten up a lot of your budget. So you're going to stay on the cheap. Yesterday, we listed our Five Best Budget Brands in Europe so that you will know the best hotels to hit up and what you get for your money.

But you also need to know which ones to avoid. Sure, the prices are right at these budget brands but there are times you may want to pay a little more for your peace of mind.

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Tags: Anti-View / Madrid Hotels / Budget Hotels / Ibis Hotels / → All Tags

The View From This Madrid Ibis is Ibusted

Where: Valentin Beato 20 - 28037, Madrid, Spain

You know the scene. You open the door to your brand new hotel room, run over to the window, open the blinds and bam, you are hit with the anti-view. Maybe you are looking down a dirty alley, witnessing a drug deal, staring at an air shaft in the face, or seeing a brick wall. Whatever you are viewing it is not extremely pleasurable. Help out your fellow hotel mavens by uploading your anti-views to the HotelChatter/Flickr photo pool, or by sending the photo along to us. Remember to tell us the name of the hotel and the room number with the not-so-easy-on-the-eyes view.

Things to see in Madrid: see a game at Bernabeu Stadium. Picasso's Guernica. The Plaza Mayor. The Royal Palace.

Things that can be seen from Room 18 of the Ibis Madrid, Valentin Beato: this.

This was shot by that_james and was posted to Flickr — granted, this particular hotel is "5.6 miles from the Sol district in the city center," according to the website, so maybe there's not a whole lot around here to see.

But we suppose you get what you pay for: this 128-room hotel (it has all "new rooms with air conditioning") will cost you 76.32 USD a night — or $69.26 if you want to book with a no change, no cancellation policy.

[Photo: that_james]

Tags: Hotel Deals / Accor Hotels / Novotel Hotels / Mercure Hotels / Ibis Hotels / All Seasons Hotels / Asia Hotels / Australia Hotels / → All Tags

Accor Tempting Us With Three-Day Sale in Oz, Kiwiland and Asia

Accor Hotels in the Asia Pacific are getting ready for a three-day sale--they say there'll be a million rooms in 250 hotels up for grabs at rates discounted by more than 75%. The sale runs from February 24 to 26 and is for stays between April and July.

This region includes Australia, New Zealand and Asia, and includes a bunch of hotel chains that are all branded to Accor: Novotel, Mercure, Ibis and All Seasons are among them.

Right now at the super sale website all you can see is a tantalizing "Coming soon", but we'll be there early on February 24. We're after an Adelaide hotel room in May and we'll let you know what kind of bargain we snag.

[Photo: Wikimedia]

Tags: Hotel Contests / Ibis Hotels / Singapore Hotels / Hotel Openings / → All Tags

You Can Pay Whatever You Like at the Singapore Ibis

Where: Bencoolen Street, Singapore, Singapore, 179031

Because we can never pass up an opportunity to insert at TI lyric into the headline.

We're starting to believe that there has never been as good of a time than right now to be a hotel guest. Hotels are bending over backwards trying to entice you to their hotels. Since guests only care about price these days, hotels are trying to lessen the sticker shock we've experienced over the past years by offering insane crazy deals.

Like the British hotels that are offering rooms for a pound and Last Minute Travel's hotel rooms for $1, the soon-to-open Singapore Ibis is allowing guests to pay whatever they like for their hotel room.

Rooms at the Singapore Ibis, a member of the chain with the same name, normally start at 138 Singapore dollars ($92) but, as part of a promotional campaign ahead of its Feb. 12 opening, guests can log onto a website (www.paywhatyouwant.com.sg) to put in the price they want to pay for a limited time each day.

The hotel is also offering you a chance to win a four-night stay with two return airfares to Singapore. All you have to do is play some virtual game where you test your skills as a general manager. We signed up for the whole gig but unfortunately we were outside of the sale time today.

In all the "Pay What You Want" excitement we forgot to even look at what will be in the hotel. Turns out all the rooms will have free WiFi, 22" LCD TVs and large bay windows. But the rooms will be fairly small--about 215-sq.ft. Downstairs, the TASTE restaurant downstairs will serve Asian Tapas and The Bar will serve, wait for it, drinks. So how much would you pay to stay here?

Tags: HotelChatter Reviews / Sydney Hotel Reviews / Ibis Hotels / Hotel Bathrooms / → All Tags

Ibis Darling Harbour Gives You "Four Minutes To Save the World"

Where: 70 Murray Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000

Someone told us not to expect any kind of view when we checked into the Hotel Ibis Darling Harbour in Sydney, and when we booked a last minute special for A$89 ($60) we definitely expected to be shoved into a room resembling a corner closet.

But no--the Ibis Darling Harbour really surprised us. Sandwiched between the more expensive Novotel and Grand Mercure Apartments, the Ibis turns out to be great value for such a sought-after tourist spot. And our cheapie room even had a view--not over Darling Harbour but in the other direction towards the Star City casino complex and the "other" bridge in Sydney, the Anzac Bridge.

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Tags: Dirty Hotels / Travelodge Hotels / Ibis Hotels / London Hotels / Hotel News / → All Tags

UK Budget Hotels Found Unfit to Lick

A room at the Ibis Eustson in London.

Here's an early-morning story out of the UK that will give you the heebie jeebies: Holiday magazine sent microbiological technical consultants into sixteen budget hotel rooms around the UK and found some pretty skanky stuff in a few Ibis and Travelodge properties.

In this iteration of the classic evening-news-coming-into-a-hotel-with-a-blacklight operation, the budget rooms were thoroughly inspected and, well, let's just say that the Extended Stay Lick-Everything Chick would not fare well in these rooms.

From a recap of the investigation by BBC News:

Mould was found growing on a mattress at an Ibis hotel on Manchester's Charles Street, while a duvet at the Portland Street Ibis, also in Manchester, had a stain suspected to be blood.

A toilet at Ibis Euston in London was found to have urine and faeces around its seat and urine down its pedestal, the report said.

As for the Travelodge properties with cleanliness issues, high levels of bacteria and dust were found at three Travelodge hotels in London and two in Manchester.

Fortunately, experts have determined that none of the hygiene issues really pose a threat to the health of the guests using those rooms. Unless you lick everything in the hotel room.

[Photo: dogfael]

Tags: Wheelchair Accessible Hotels / Disabled Access Hotels / Hotel Websites / Europe Hotels / Ibis Hotels / Scandic Hotels / ETAP Hotels / → All Tags

Wheelchair Accessible Hotels :: Scandic Hotels Do It Best

This week our roving correspondent Monica Guy is writing about an oft-overlooked aspect of hotels and travel: disabled access. Monica knows a lot about this subject as she works and travels frequently with Stephen Hawking. However, feel free to chime in with your thoughts and experiences too. Got a question? Let us know and we'll get it answered for you.

For disabled travellers outside of the US, perhaps a better option than designated specially-designed accessible hotels is to go for ordinary hotel chains who take access seriously.

Three cheers in this department go to the Swedish-owned Scandic Hotel chain. They recently won two prestigious awards for their efforts in the field of disabled access. Unlike most chains, they employ a full-time disability coordinator, Magnus Bergland, to advise on access issues and train staff in how to deal with guests with disabilities.

In fact, he not only advises, he makes all new staff get into a wheelchair and follow the 'guest's route' round the hotel, from parking and the reception desk to the room, bathroom and breakfast area. It's only by doing this, he claims, that people gain any sort of understanding as to the difficulties faced by disabled guests.

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