Good – Low price of £25 for a room which sleeps up to three adults. Ability to get low rate even with late booking. Convenient location, just off M9 with plenty free parking.

Bad – Dirty shared bathroom facilities and no tea and coffee making facilities in room. Room very basic with very thin mattress and small double bed. A 6 digit pin code rather than key to access room.

Rating out of 10 – 5

I started my search for accommodation in the Falkirk area on my favourite hotel price comparison site, HotelsCombined where the Metro Inn in Falkirk came up at £30 a night for room only on the Laterooms site. However following my own advice on how to find the lowest rate I checked out that Metro Inns site and the found the room for £24.50.

I stayed at the Metro Inn in Falkirk for one night in April 2008. The hotel used to be branded Formule 1 part of the Accor hotel group but five of the Formule 1 hotels, Falkirk, Newcastle, Teeside, Doncaster and Peterborough were sold to Metro Inns a couple of years ago.

Metro Inns have shared bathroom facilities. There are separate plastic moulded wc and shower units which are designed to be self cleaning but I don’t think that the cleaning was taking place. I had two problems with the shared bathrooms, the first that the bathrooms were not clean. The other than you don’t receive a key but a six digit pin code to access your room. If you need to go to the bathroom during the night you need to remember to take the slip of paper with your pin code or you’ll end up locked out of your room and it’s much easier to lock and unlock a door with key than punch in six digits when you are half asleep. I dropped my slip of paper on the wet floor in the shower room and could hardly read the pin.

Shared bathrooms alone is not enough to discourage me from booking accommodation, it depends on other factors too, the price of the accommodation, the ratio of bathrooms to guest bedrooms and the cleanliness of the facilities.

The room had a TV but no tea and coffee making facilities. There were several vending machines selling food and drink in the hotel lobby. There was a small double bed with a very thin mattress which had a single bunk directly above. There was a sink in the room.

The website says there is free wifi access at Metro Inns but I didn’t check this out.

I wouldn’t be keen to stay at Metro Inns again, mainly because of the dirty shared bathrooms and the very basic rooms. It is good value, especially if 3 people stay it’s as cheap as a youth hostel dorm and you have a private room. I rate Travelodge much more highly as you can get a much better standard of room, more spacious and a large comfy bed with a private bathroom, which sleeps up to 2 adults and 2 kids but you have to book at least 21 days in advance to get the non refundable Saver rate of £19.