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Five Cheap London Hotels To Avoid a Craigslist Scam

Last week The New York Times’ Frugal Traveler got scammed after booking an apartment on Craigslist and that sucks. So being the nice people that we are we thought we’d give you a list of cheap London hotels so you don’t have to trawl for a cheap flat and end up getting burnt. Also worth noting: people in London use Gumtree over Craigslist, anyways.

Tune Hotel Westminster

The Tune Hotel Westminster is one of our favourite cheap hotels. It has everything you need from a budget hotel – a bed and a bathroom. There’s also a TV, but, like everything else you need to pay to use it. Even with all of the extras, though, it still works out pretty cheap: under £60 when we stayed there.

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Room Rate Gimmicks / Travelodge Hotels / Hotel Deals / Hotel Sales / London Hotels / UK Hotels / → All Tags

The Travelodge’s Biggest Room Sale EVER Starts on Wednesday

Where: United Kingdom

Make sure you set your alarms this Wednesday and do not oversleep! That's because UK budget hotel chain, Travelodge, is holding one of its famous £9 room sales.

The sale kicks off at 6am UK time with thousands of rooms available at Travelodges all over the UK.

The £9 rooms (approx $14 USD) will be available on selected dates throughout the whole of next year. Yes, that's right-- we said the whole of next year, from 1st January 2011 - 28th December. 2011. And we thought Christmas was already over!

So if you’re after a cheap room for the night, log onto the website this Wednesday, December 29 at 6am. All rooms are subject to availability, and are valid for a limited time only.

With over 300 Travelodges in the UK, 10 of which are located in London there are plenty to choose from. But remember, most of the good dates and locations sell out fast so be super quick!

Hotel Fights / Hotel Ads / Hotel Woes / Budget Hotels / Travelodge Hotels / Premier Inn Hotels / → All Tags

It's War in the UK Between Travelodge and Premier Inn

Where: United Kingdom

Click on Lenny – not to his left

Trouble is brewing in budget UK bedland. The catalyst? Premier Inn’s promotion, fronted by an E list celeb (Lenny Henry) and offering 1,000,000 rooms for £29 on stays from Thursdays to Mondays until April 2010.

The T&Cs were a little daunting – stay two nights (why would you want to stay two nights in a Premier Inn?) or one on a Sunday, book 21 days ahead (if we ever get so organised that we’ll book a motel three weeks in advance, we’ll rip out our own fingernails) – but apart from that, fair enough.

Except, then Premier Inn’s main rivals, Travelodge, checked out the offer and discovered that there was a confusing, two tier booking system on the website.

If you click on Lenny Henry’s face, under “Premier Offers”, you’ve got a 24 per cent chance of bagging a cheapo room. But if you click on the “Quick Booking” facility just to its left – which you might be more likely to do if you had a specific date in mind – there’s less than 1 per cent chance of getting one.

As reported by The Times, Travelodge – which is currently boasting rooms for £9 in its Easter sale - have whipped it up, lodging a formal complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority , mentioning it in its weekly mailshot and setting up an anti-Premier Inn petition.

But it may just have backfired. Not only are people hitting the comments boards slagging off Travelodge for the state of its rooms, but it’s also alerted its entire customer base to a cheap deal with its rival. Meanwhile, Premier Inn have vowed to correct the booking “anomaly”.

We still think it was bad form of Premier Inn not to have the cheap prices running throughout the website, but Travelodge, you’re not looking good right now. Frankly, we’ll be boycotting the pair of you.

iPhone Apps / Hotel Technology / Hotel News / Four Seasons Hotels / Starwood Hotels / Omni Hotels / Choice Hotels / Travelodge Hotels / → All Tags

For Better or Worse, These Hotels Have Realized 'There's An App For That'

We've been variously hot and cold about hotel chain iPhone apps. As a rule we embrace anything that can help us travel easier while already on the road, and we certainly embrace it if it lives in the App Store. But hotel apps fall into that dicey category where we're not sure that the bother that goes into them is worth whatever comes out.

Hotel iPhone applications generally help you find a nearby chain hotel and check in through your rewards account. Sometimes they may automatically dial customer service. All of which is great except people rarely book within just one chain. Price is usually the most important factor, which means using a search engine, and rarely is someone in so much of a pinch that exact GPS-pinpointed location matters.

As for checking in, well, we're not talking about flights. The hotel will still be there waiting when you arrive, and you'll still have to wait in line to get it. Checking in doesn't have to happen from the road.

Nonetheless, hotels aren't going to stop producing apps. It's just what companies do these days. So here's our roundup of the industry's current offerings. Feel free to sound off in the comments: would you make space on your beloved iPhone for something like this?

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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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Budget Hotels / City Inn Hotels / NH Hotels / Mercure Hotels / Travelodge Hotels / EasyHotels / → All Tags

The Five Best Budget Brands in Europe

In need of a cheapo vacation? Thinking that the $100 and $150 deals we were talking about here are out of your price range this time round? It’s time to rediscover the joys of the budget hotel.

And while Europe doesn’t have quite as many as America (in other words, there isn't a choice of about five chain motels at every motorway exit), it’s still possible to know roughly what’s in store when you book into a budgie room. Here are our Five Best Budget Brands in Europe. Tune in tomorrow for our picks for the worst.

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Anti-View / Travelodge Hotels / Budget Hotels / → All Tags

This Canadian Hotel is 'Not Exactly Couples Paradise'

Where: 4177 Albert Street South, Regina, SK, Canada, S4S 3R6

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.

Oh, goodness. This is not very nice. This hotel advertises itself on its website as Regina, Saskatchewan's "premier hotel for business or leisure." We would like to contend this claim; instead, we submit that this is the world's premier hotel for people watching and sort of nothing else.

This is a shot out the window of a hotel room (yes, a hotel room) at the Travelodge in Regina, Saskatchewan, taken by Flickr user emmerogers, who notes that this view makes the hotel "not exactly couples paradise." Uh, yeah. Agreed.

Anyway, this is a budget, family-friendly hotel, but it is not really conducive to, er, makin' the family grow, if you get our drift. It's got an on-site family restaurant, this indoor pool and waterslide complex and offers free parking, and rooms run around $139.00. Should you ever find yourself in Regina with the kiddies or a deep urge to people watch, why not go for it?

[Photo: emmerogers]

Hotel Deals / Travelodge Hotels / Hotel News / → All Tags

Travelodge Will Slash Room Rates to £9 This Week

Where: United Kingdom

We know US hotels are getting despo these days (desperate, that is — in case you're not hip to the abbreves) and chains are slashing room rates in an effort to lure you into their rooms. Things are just as tough across the pond: According to the Telegraph, the average price of a hotel room in Britain fell to its lowest point in four years at the end of 2008, and the economy has been rough on hotel operators across the UK — bad news for them, but good news for you: rates are going down. Way down.

Wallet-friendly chain Travelodge is the latest to hop aboard the rate-kickback train and, starting Thursday morning, they'll be launching a sale offering 50,000 rooms across Britain at £9 per night (about 13 USD), and 100,000 more rooms will go on sale for £19 (about 28 USD) a night. Also, you'll be able to snag rooms for 10 euros at the chain's three Spanish properties (in Madrid and Barcelona).

Per the Telegraph:

The sale kicks off at 6:00 am on Thursday and will be available for stays between August 27 and November 30, including over the August Bank Holiday and the autumn half term break.

For US folks, 6 am Thursday over there is 1 am Thursday morning (so, like, Wednesday night, really) on the East Coast. The sale will go live here.

[Photo: AP via Telegraph UK]

iPhone Apps / Hotel Technology / Travelodge Hotels / → All Tags

Is the iPhone App Going to Be the Booking Engine of the Future?

This week, UK chain Travelodge made a splash by launching its iBooker, a free, downloadable iPhone application that uses GPS to find your location, pulls up the five closest Travelodge hotels, and allows you to book an available room at the property (you can also book a room via the iBooker without using the GPS system).

This isn't the first free hotel booking engine to make its way onto the iPhone; you may recall that Hotels.com launched a booking application last summer that we found to be, um, not all that awesome. But will this whole booking-via-chain-specific-iPhone app — like the Travelodge iBooker — become the hot new thang? Is this the wave of the future?

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Budget Hotels / City Inn hotels / Travelodge Hotels / Hotel Amenities / → All Tags

The City Inn London is The Best of The Budget Chains

Where: 30 John Islip Street, London, United Kingdom, SW1P 4DD

So you want a cheap hotel in London? Not as hard as we used to think (as long as you understand that “cheap” in London is always going to mean “relatively cheap”). For a start, it’s just been named cheaper than New York for the first time since 2002, thanks to the dropping pound.

And for another thing, thanks to the whole credit crunch, the top hotels are cranking out some pretty sound offers to entice people in.

So, if you’ve planned it properly, you shouldn’t really have to think about staying in a budget chain. But say you haven’t, there’s no handy £1 sale at the Hoxton, and you don’t fancy the horrid Cromwell Crown. You might need to venture into chainland.

Which to choose? Lucky for us, the Observer’s Tom Robbins stayed in a different one each night for a week, to save us the hassle.

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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]

Travelodge Hotels / Budget Hotels / Hotel News / → All Tags

Travelodge UK Doing A-OK with $25 Room Rates

We’ve told you time and time again about the wacky antics of Travelodge Hotels, with its surveys about nude sleepwalkers and hotels built from garbage. Turns out, they know what they’re up to, and the unique brand they’ve built for themselves, paired with room rates slashed from $115 to $25, makes the company a standout winner during the current economic apocalypse.

The budget chain plans to open 22 new hotels before Christmas in the United Kingdom alone, focusing on tourist cities like Stratford-upon-Avon, Torquay and Edinburgh. It’s also hiring 450 employees, choosing from what is surely a plentiful pool of unemployed workers.

Next year, the company plans to double this expansion, with plans for 40-plus hotels. This all seems a bit overly optimistic, but the company insists it’s benefiting from the economy, with bookings in October up 45 per cent over the same time last year, a Financial Times story reports.

Maybe this proves that honesty really is the best policy. Companies that misrepresented themselves are suffering terribly, while Travelodge, which embraces its budget persona with slogans like "all hotels look the same when you put the lights out," is sweeping up the cash, 25 bucks at a time.