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

October 13, 2009 at 5:43 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

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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The Five Worst Budget Brands In Europe

September 9, 2009 at 1:42 PM | by juliab | 3 Comments

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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The Five Best Budget Brands in Europe

September 8, 2009 at 10:59 AM | by juliab | 5 Comments

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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This Canadian Hotel is 'Not Exactly Couples Paradise'

Go To The Hotel's Web Site Where: 4177 Albert Street South, Regina, SK, Canada, S4S 3R6
April 23, 2009 at 11:39 AM | by Jenna | 0 Comments

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]

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Travelodge Will Slash Room Rates to £9 This Week

April 20, 2009 at 10:47 AM | by Jenna | 0 Comments

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]

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

March 25, 2009 at 4:10 PM | by Jenna | 2 Comments

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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UK Budget Hotels Found Unfit to Lick

January 6, 2009 at 9:43 AM | by Jenna | 3 Comments

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]

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Travelodge UK Doing A-OK with $25 Room Rates

October 30, 2008 at 9:32 AM | by ced138 | 0 Comments

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.

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Update :: Ace Hotel Palm Springs Closer to Opening

Go To The Hotel's Web Site Where: 701 E. Palm Canyon [map], Palm Springs, CA, United States, 92264-8811
October 7, 2008 at 12:04 PM | by abigailmschilling | 1 Comment

The Palm Springs Ace Hotel & Swim Club is gearing up for its (hopefully, cross-your-fingers) January opening. They now have a reservations page up! Isn't it pretty?

Of course you can't actually make reservations yet. But soon. Pretty soon, in fact. Stay tuned.

Interestingly enough, the sizzle factor of this new hotel is raising expectations for other remodels and updates.

The Desert Sun recently reported that renovations for the Palm Springs Travelodge were rejected by the Palm Springs Architectural Advisory Committee because they were too boring. Awesome, right? Who knew there were other crusaders out there marching for our cause?

[Committee member Doug] Hudson said the hotel is a good example of 1950s and 1960s motor hotel architecture and the owners need to educate themselves about the style, which is "hot and trendy" right now.

"Use some creativity," Hudson said. "Get into the vintage groove and have fun with it."

We guess that The Ace, formerly a HoJo, got in the "vintage groove."

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Travelodge Releases Annual List of Most-Discarded Books in Hotel Rooms

September 4, 2008 at 1:46 PM | by KatieK | 1 Comment

You have to feel sorta bad for the unfortunate dude who leaves behind both The Kama Sutra for Dummies and How to be a Gentleman in Seven Days at a Travelodge. (So many unanswered questions!)

Leave it to Travelodge Hotels to monitor -- and report -- such activity (and, ahem, leave it to us to poke fun at it).

Indeed, the U.K. budget chain just released its annual list of books abandoned in hotel rooms at 336 properties, and while this year's 7,000 discarded titles were mostly autobiographies (John Prescott's memoir tops the list), chick lit, and thrillers, a healthy sprinkling of sex manuals also made the list, like The Best 50 Love Making Positions for the Over 50s.

Travelodge even goes so far as to apply a little Psych 101 musing to the findings: Cardiff and London hotel guests are more likely to discard cash-saving books, perhaps revealing despair at the wallet-damaging cost of city life, while do-gooder Cornwell guests leave behind titles with a spiritual bent.

That's interesting and all, but wethinks Travelodge might stick to what they do best -- offering bizarro perks, incubating nude sleepwalkers, and launching recycled hotels.

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Travelodge's Recycled Hotel :: The Final Result

August 19, 2008 at 11:17 AM | by Jenna | 0 Comments

We told you all about Travelodge's recycled hotel -- you know, the one with steel shipping containers stacked up together like legos -- and we brought you news last week that the property was open for business.

But what we were envisioning here wasn't quite this...well, boring.

We've got to give Travelodge props for making the interior feel homey and look just like any other hotel, but we kind of not-so-secretly wished this hotel would have looked like a big stack of shipping containers for the novelty of it.

World Architecture News had some fun facts about the green benefits of going the recycled-hotel route:

A traditional 100-bed hotel costs Travelodge around £5 million to build. Construction using shipping containers reduces costs by up to 10 per cent, making the bill for a hotel of the same size around £4.5 million. Using Verbus Modules also shaves approximately 25% off construction time, meaning a 100-bed hotel can be built in 30 weeks, instead of 40.

Travelodge is planning to build half of all hotels this way from now on (!) and the second shipping container hotel is already under construction at Heathrow.

A cool shot of the shipping containers being stacked into the building frame after the jump.

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Travelodge Opens 'Recyclable' Hotel Made of Shipping Containers

Where: Uxbridge
August 15, 2008 at 12:26 PM | by Jenna | 0 Comments

Oh Travelodge Hotels, you so crazy.

First it was those insane pajamas. Then came the nude sleepwalkers study. Let's not forget the free rooms for people who happen to be named Mary and Joseph when Christmastime comes around, or the option to have the sweet aroma of grass wafted into guestrooms overnight.

And then there was that recyclable hotel you told us you were building. And, like, we knew you were into some crazy stuff -- but it seems you've actually gone and done this thing because we hear your hotel made out of recycled modified steel shipping containers is now open.

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