Norwich holiday inn North review ( Room 229) (7/10)
The Good
” Spacious room and welcoming staff”.
” Good size of mug and TV picture quality”.
” Nice plug number for charging and good clothing ironing facilities”.
The Bad
” Tea provisions a little disorganised with lack of selection for tea or coffee”.
” Lack of hairdryer or shampoo provided”.
” Location quite far out of town”.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere, due to the friendly welcome and quirky bar was very nice. The hotel itself was not located in a great place for noise levels since it was situated directly beside an airport and busy motorway-style roads. The spacious room size and well working TV kept things enjoyable however with no power-cuts or lack of broadband access to spoil things.
The location however was not ideal since it was an hour walk from town and not in an especially scenic location. This is perhaps difficult to help so can be forgiven.
Tea provisions
The kettle at 1 litre was not huge in capacity although the mugs more than compensated for this with generous size. The tea bag selection was not that imaginative with 4 sachets of exclusively Tetley. That said 4 tea bags, 4 coffee sachets, 4 brown, white sugar and sweetener made things quite uniform. These were replaced on request and organised neatly on a restock. The number was mostly sufficient. It was also good to see sweetener sachets not present in all hotels.
All looked good in terms of selection but the provisions were placed in a disorganised heap on arrival and could have benefitted from using the tray provided for better organisation. There were 4 semi- skimmed UHT milk tubs to accompany the all four theme. Again it would have been nice to have a mixture with full fat and semi skimmed if I was being picky.
The location of the kettle in the cupboard may have been tidy but since there was no access to power in the cupboard it meant that the kettle had to be moved away from all the tea provisions to be used resulting in slight impracticality.
Community areas
On entry, the bar seemed to have plenty of quirky designs and appeared a great space to sit and socialise. This was made welcoming by polite efficient staff on entry which made a refreshing change from the disorganization at Ipswich.
The hotel also had a swimming pool which is always a good feature.
On sitting in the bar area, staff were very accommodating enabling own product consumption in addition to drinks ordered. The TV in the bar seating area was a nice touch with subtitles and no background music to keep the atmosphere tranquil.
Price
At 80 pounds for the night the room rate was not particularly cheap so perhaps a few more nice touches would be pleasant to make value ” good”. That said the room space was large and there was a bar and pool. The menu prices as is often the case was far too overpriced to tempt me to order. A bit of a shame really.
Washing and cleaning
The shower had 2 nozzles; One for pressure and the other for temperature which was nice.
There was a wide, full height body mirror in the main living area by a wardrobe with sliding doors. The bathroom also had a mirror which was helpful.
The body mirror was not quite high enough to include the top of my hair and bearing in mind I am only slightly over 6 foot this wasn’t ideal. The distinct lack of hairdryer was not ideal although plenty of clean towels were provided well organised on the bathroom workspace.
The hanger number of 6 between 2 guests was just about adequate although 10 would have been a better count in my opinion.
The ironing facilities including iron and board was good to see and storage in the wardrobe made them easy to spot. No shampoo was provided however which was a little disappointing with a couple of hanging body washes which just aren’t the same.
Chilling in your room
There were 2 seats; One was a wheelie office chair and the other a green, upholstered sofa-style seat,
One was facing a bed by the window and the office chair despite being at a desk was too low to work with. This made seating arrangements rather impractical. The bed had 2 thin pillows which seemed like a comfy setup.
The bed was comfortable although a little far from the TV. The other bed however was located to the side of the headboard making it’s location right next to the window a little impractical and confusing. The TV was simple to operate using the remote but did not have any excess luxury such as the touch screen buttons present on the TV at the Radisson blu in Leeds. There was no excess luxury as seen in Stoke such as en-suite fridges or a kitchenette.
The room was spacious however. Perhaps a little too much so for the size of the TV although picture clarity and size was certainly adequate.
Charging facilities were not too bad although plug sockets were not that common they were accessible and not hidden behind furniture as it often the case There was at least 5 present in the room which seems like a good number between 2 guests.
It was also a bit strange to have a bible and a yellow pages provided in the cupboard.
Customer service
On entry check-in was quick and slick with even a welcome message on the key card booklet. This was very nice. To improve potentially an intro talk or walk to the room as was the case at the lymedale suites at Stoke would have been perfect although this was not any real fault.
Summary
A spacious room in a slightly noisy location. Facilities were basic but there were no real problems. On request the keycard was replaced although this was extremely sensitive to wear and tear so therefore impractical. Some parts of the organization of furniture and accessories for the room were either basic or a little confused.
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