Travelodge are a rotten hotel chain. Even by budget standards, they're especially mean-spirited: not only paring the cheese, but proudly flaunt their penny-pinching:
Why can't you call the reception from the telephone in your room?
Providing a concierge-style service requires additional staff which means additional cost. And we reckon that for the sake of a short walk to the reception desk, customers would rather enjoy our great-value low room rates.
But since the person on the desk has to answer the questions anyway, how does it save money to make people trump along the halls and down the lifts to do it in person? And what do you do in an emergency?
In the event of an emergency you can call 999 direct on the room phone.
In other words, if you accidentally slash your wrists or crack your head open while in the room, you can't ask for help from the person "the short walk" down the hall, you have to ring up the police and wait for them to arrive.
However, despite this Spartan approach to keeping costs down, the company does seem to have an enormous pile of money to waste on pointless surveys. The latest
has 'discovered' that British people fall asleep to Coldplay, and unveils this astonishing gem:
"The research shows that we are increasingly relying on slow, sleepy music and unchallenging books to take our minds off the pressures of modern living, to help us switch off and get to sleep at night", said Travelodge spokesperson Leigh McCarron.
Really? That's a surprise. You mean people don't tend to put on salsa tunes and start to snort coke when they want to go to bed?
A business that won't provide a biscuit to its guests because that would push up prices, but will commission a survey to discover that, when you're going to bed, you listen to quiet music.
Clearly, though, the very thought of Coldplay in an unlovely hotel room sent someone off a little early at the NME.
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