Review of Cheaperthanhotels.co.uk
Welcome to my blog, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Cheaperthanhotels.co.uk claim to offer the lowest publicly available room rates that you can find on the internet, covered by their “Lowest Rate Guarantee”. I based my review on a search for accommodation in Edinburgh - last minute, good quality, low priced (hopefully under £80 a night) accommodation for two guests for the following week. Edinburgh is one of my favourite cities in the UK, now I know I’m biased as I’m Scottish. I also know Edinburgh quite well and the location of many accommodation options.
The first thing I noticed when I went to the site was the rather garish colours, yellow and red. Near the top of the page was the the “Today’s Special” offer of a city centre apartment for £85 a night, which sounds a pretty good price for Edinburgh. The photos of the apartment looked pretty impressive, modern fitted kitchen, spacious pleasant bedrooms. There were very clear directions on how to reach the apartment.
However when I clicked on to the booking page, it turns out that you are not guaranteed a specific location or apartment. The directions given are to the central office where you have to go to pick up the key to your allocation apartment. I wouldn’t be amused if I carried my luggage or paid for a taxi to the booking office and then had to set off in the opposite direction if my apartments was near the Royal Mile. It’s not even clear if an apartment for two guests will be a studio or have a separate bedroom.
Personally I wouldn’t be happy with this arrangement. You could be lucky and end up in a great apartments or a cramped studio, I wouldn’t take the risk plus the hassle having to get myself and my luggage to an office and then on to my apartment. Although I agree it is initially appealing to have an apartment with self catering facilites, for a similar price to a hotel.
I decided I’d better try a hotel as I wouldn’t be interested in the budget option of a hostel. The cheapest 2 star hotel wasn’t even in Edinburgh but in Inverkeithing a town at least 15 miles away on the other side of the Forth Estuary. The next cheapest hotel was the Grassmarket and it was £80 but that didn’t include breakfast. Now I would expect breakfast to be included at a two star hotel which charges £80 a night.
At this stage I gave up feeling rather frustrated with the site, after a fruitless 20 minutes. I felt that I’d been misled with the apartment details, found a hotel which was miles from Edinburgh and then one which seemed expensive for all it offered. I didn’t like the colours or the layout of the site, there was too much text and detail. I would prefer there to be a search box in which I could enter my proposed dates and the type of accommodation rather than having to scroll down accommodation lists and click on each one to check availability.
So based on my experience I’d say don’t bother wasting your time with cheaperthanhotels. I much prefer Laterooms which I use regularly for accommodation in Edinburgh and again on the occasion Laterooms came up with several hotels and guesthouses with prices starting at £65 a night including continental breakfast for the Original Raj Hotel.
