RapidAssistant wrote:Josef wrote:The Egg Man wrote:The challenge with hotels is that they try to provide sufficient beds to cope with maximum demand (eg Edinburgh during the Festival) and then try to find a use for them the rest of the year. Or they load the rate at busy times to soften the hit of quieter times.
My brother has booked 2/3 nights a week at c £95/ night in the same hotel at Euston station for a couple of years. This year, during Wimbledon, the rate became £225/ night.
A colleague from Down South had to book a hotel in Edinburgh to come up for a week. Even the downscale hotels were charging £500 per night.
Curiously, the normally expensive hotels were by far the cheapest, presumably on the basis that people go "Jesus, if that's what the Holiday Inn is charging, feck knows what Y is" and don't even bother looking.
I've had similar experiences in London - the Premier Inns seem to be the biggest culprits - who bang on about their £49 rooms but try finding one!! I've often found that Hiltons are cheaper on their pay-in-advance rates if you play the system well enough. They'll try and stuff you on the food and drink prices as you will discover, so be warned!! Even in Glasgow I've seen that the main Hilton or the Hilton Grosvenor can sometimes be only £20 dearer than your Premier Inns if booked well in advance at the right time of year.
Same goes for flying down to London come to think of it - when you factor in all the added costs of check-in, priority boarding, catering on plane, luggage and all the rest of it - flying BA to Heathrow or London City is cheaper (not to mention far more convenient) that easyJet. As you say - people always assume the 'low cost' guys are the cheapest without actually checking for themselves. Probably the same for a lot of things. Is ASDA always cheaper than Waitrose or Markies for example??
Yes, last couple of times I had to go to London the poxy Travelodge in City Road was only a tenner cheaper than the Thistle Barbican (ok it ain't in the Barbican), but with a proper breakfast, pool, gym and a nice room. No contest, and still only 15-20 minutes walk from Spitalfields, where I was heading.