Reviewing a hotel.

Last night I had the pleasure of visiting Newcastle for the night and a reluctance to risk paying for a sleeper train there was no guarantee I would get to sleep on meant I decided to book myself into a hotel.  To be more precise, the cheapest hotel I could find.  After a fair amount of pondering I eventually went for the two star, dive hole in the arm pit of town hotel for just £25 (en suite  and breakfast included!).

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I got into the town at about sixish, the night already upon me and began the 30 minute walk from the station to my hotel.  Having never been to Newcastle before, I was initially surprised by the beauty of it all… this was quickly to change as my walk took me further out of the centre of town and into what looked like one of the more run down areas of the city. I passed a few hotels on my walk, each getting progressively worse in appearance and stature until I eventually came up on my resting place for the night. In all it’s dilapidated, neon glory.

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The phrase, you pay for what you get, was written for this place.  The service was passable, the room small, the walls thin, the bed hard, the locks worrying.  But what did I expect for £25 right?  And I suppose this is my point… You see I always like to write  a review on the hotels website afterwards, giving my honest opinion of  a place.  But I’m struggling with this one… This is because, considering the price, it actually wasn’t too bad.  The room was warm (though I had no control over the heater), the TV worked, the hot water eventually came on and I had four teabags and a kettle to use at my discretion!

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I actually quite enjoyed the squalidness of it all and had no guilt about ordering pizza in and eating it on the bed whilst watching rubbish on TV (my God, SWAT is a bad movie!).  The only time I came close to losing my rag was when I finally settled down to sleep and a faint, distant, monotonous snore could be heard.  It was just loud enough to drive me up the wall for about an hour and yet I had no idea which room it was coming from!  This was when my sunny disposition on the state of the hotel was truly tested.  However, in the cold light of day, is it really there fault that I couldn’t sleep because some one was snoring there socks off?

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Overall, I suppose what I’m asking is, do you review something purely on the expectations you had when you went into the place, on it’s own merits if you will  (this place would have been a 3 and a half out of five) or do you review it in comparison with all the other hotels in the world (a generous 1 and a half stars maybe)?

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I really should stop procrastinating with this blog and get back writing the review…