The Travelodge Rant or Mistakes I have made (Part One)

Well, I can honestly say that booking myself into the Travelodge this week was a mistake. An epic mistake, in fact. OK, I can write a lot of it off as “a learning experience”, which roughly translates to “Things I intend to only ever do once in my life”.

Put it this way – I now understand why they charge you upfront for the rooms. If they left it ’til the end of the stay, they’d be losing money.

Obviously, I understand that the entire thing is a business, and thus is there to make a profit. I’ve been in the hospitality business, and have been strongly considering going back into it in the long run. But that’s a post for another time. However, running a profitable business doesn’t – well, doesn’t to me, anyway – mean gouging every available penny from one’s customers. It also doesn’t mean “annoy the shit out of them with stupid unnecessary stuff”. Oh, and it does mean “get into at least the 20th century”.

Bear in mind, this Travelodge that I’m using is brand new. It’s been built less than four years – and I think, only in the last couple of years. But because of the “gouge as much as possible from customers” ethos, they still try to charge a minimum of 50p per minute for phone calls. And more if they can get away with it. Calling a local-rate 0845 number that should be dead cheap? 50p a minute please. Calling an 0800 (or whatever the bloody code is now) freephone number? 50p per minute, please. Yes, even freephone calls are charged. So internet access is chargeable, and at rates that would’ve been extortionate five years ago, let alone now.

I just don’t understand the ethos. If you let that kind of stuff go through, it’s not costing you anything as a business – and in fact it’s going to increase your business, as people will stay there because it’s allowing through the internet access without gouging you for it. But oh no, instead they’ll charge through the nose for things that people usually now take for granted.

In the same context, I don’t really get the “charge extra for breakfast” ethos either. The place I stayed last week was a flat rate, including breakfast (although still no internet access – can’t have everything) and still cost less than the Travelodge’s room-only rate.

Oh, and when you get to the room, you have to use your key-card to turn on the power, lights etc. And it turns on the bloody air-conditioning too. Not that I normally object to air-con. But in October? Is it really necessary? It’s incredibly loud too – and you can’t turn the fucking thing off. I spoke to reception about it, and got told “No, it’s not something you can turn off. It’s automatic”. (It turns out that there is a way to do it – if you have a spare card, or piece of plastic, or use the cardboard wallet the keycard comes in, fold it in half, and slot that down the left-hand side of the slot. Apparently, this turns on power etc. without activating the air-con. I’ll be trying it tonight, you can be sure) The only other way to turn it off is to pull out the keycard from the power box. Which, of course, means you don’t have any power or light. That’s OK when you want to sleep, but not during the evening!

Ah yes, power. For a hotel only built in the last five years (at most) you’d think they’d take things like power-points into consideration, wouldn’t you? But oh no, Travelodge don’t want to waste power costs on nasty things like customers. So there’s precisely one available power socket in the room. Nothing near the beds, it’s over on the desk. How tight-fisted can you get? Of course, you’re not going to want to , I don’t know, charge up a mobile phone overnight. Or use a laptop. Well, you might – but you can only do one at a time. And you won’t be able to charge anything overnight because – yes! – you’ve pulled the power card, so that the fucking air-conditioning doesn’t keep you awake!

In short, Travelodges are probably fine for a one-night stay, as just somewhere to crash and burn. For a prolonged stay, they’re just fucking horrible – and will try to charge for absolutely everything. Needless to say, I won’t be staying at Travelodge next week…