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Hotels General Discussion

rob666 said:
But the bloody grockles and thoosies still fill the place out in the peak, at silly prices, without management effort anyway.
Why try harder, a fresh wave of mugs turns up every year.
Don't think things will improve until the visitor numbers actually crash.
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Did things improve on hotel standards after the Smiler accident? Genuinely don't know, as I first stayed in one of the hotels in 2016.
 
rob666 said:
But the bloody grockles and thoosies still fill the place out in the peak, at silly prices, without management effort anyway.
Why try harder, a fresh wave of mugs turns up every year.
Don't think things will improve until the visitor numbers actually crash.
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s_g_k said:
Totally agree - I said this a few pages back. Every year there are thousands of fresh families whose children reach the age for them to consider a short break at the resort.

Whether they come back is irrelevant when there’s a new wave of customers each year.
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Maybe, but people do talk to each other. Parents in the schoolyard telling other parents of their experiences could have an impact and make them rethink their choices.

Word of mouth is one of the strongest ways a business gets a good (or bad) reputation.
 
And the kids keep screaming to go, and the parents give in.
It is just the same at the Beach...amuse yourself for an hour by watching the senior customer service staff field the complaints...smacking every last one to the boundary for a six with "Please check the terms and conditions you agreed to at the time of booking, feel free to write in, but you will probably still not get a refund."
Even though the top two/three rides are shut.
Each generation holds their proud memories of being ripped off, and never again.

Must say, the Beach hotels seem stunning in comparison, and dead good value with an offer, compared to the Towers.
But the Beach has real competition, by the bucketload, right on the doorstep...and that is the difference...competition close by.
When word gets round how truly crap the Towers hotels are for the money, things might change, but while the rooms are full in the holidays, not a chance.
 
Let's look at what you get with a standard room at Europa-Park which, for a family/group of 3 or 4, is roughly the same price as a weekend night at Alton Towers this year.

  1. Full room service
  2. A bowl of fresh fruit
  3. A glass bottle (1l) of mineral water and two smaller bottles
  4. Laundry service
  5. Swimming pool, whirlpool and sauna access
  6. Gym/Fitness suite and exercise classes available
  7. Free kids postcards and/or crayons and/or other small gift
  8. Fruit sweets on reception 24/7
  9. Air Con in all rooms
  10. Safe
  11. Full, huge breakfast buffet offering
  12. Checkout 11am
  13. Selection of a specific room (upon registering)
  14. Free gift on arrival (upon registering)
Regular guests (with 15 stays over the previous 10 years) also receive:
  1. Bottle of fizz in the room
  2. Free gift on checkin
  3. 10% permanent room rate discount
  4. Free gift sent to the home address at Christmas
  5. Free drink for everyone in the room at the bar (fizz, beer, wine, soft drink)
 
All towers have been pushing for weeks now is feb half term and hotel stays, so I assume they can’t be selling that well with the constant push on both.

And the public aren’t stupid, £400 a night for anyone is a large amount of money, especially when hotels don’t even include theme park tickets.
 
It’s not just the cost of booking the room anymore but the cost of the food and drinks too and I don’t think people realise that yet.

Interestingly in the past you could get the menus for the restaurants in Alton towers up on their website with prices. I’ve not been able to locate them this year. Anyone else find them with prices?
 
When there are other options for accommodation and food locally, you'd have to be very comfortable financially or financially irresponsible to spend 2/3 nights paying top whack at Towers and paying for hotel food etc. These are the two groups that I'd guess MOSTLY make bookings. See the person in the comments above saying that they should do a 'monthly payment option'. My response to ridiculous prices (even though I could afford to stay at any time if I wanted) is that I refuse to pay them. Obviously, a lot of people's response is to put it on finance and worry about paying for it later. I think that's a generational thing though where instant gratification is more common nowadays. You have the fancy car, holiday etc etc right now and worry about paying for it later. In my opinion, if you can't afford a £400 a night room somewhere without having to scrape around for months afterwards to pay for it, you probably should be looking at cheaper accomodation in the first place. Slightly controversial maybe, but that's life.
 
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I'd say the reason that more things are spreading the cost is because people are living month to month and can't take the hit financially to be able to enjoy things.

Or on a household side of things if appliances break etc.

Had years of people being accused of benefit fraud because they had flat screen tvs and mobiles. Because if you're low income you can't have anything nice I guess.
 
Benzin said:
I'd say the reason that more things are spreading the cost is because people are living month to month and can't take the hit financially to be able to enjoy things.
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Although if you can afford to pay in six instalments after booking, then you should be able to afford to save up in six instalments before booking.
 
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Benzin said:
I'd say the reason that more things are spreading the cost is because people are living month to month and can't take the hit financially to be able to enjoy things.

Or on a household side of things if appliances break etc.

Had years of people being accused of benefit fraud because they had flat screen tvs and mobiles. Because if you're low income you can't have anything nice I guess.
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No one said you can't have nice things if you're on a low income. What was said was that the responsible thing to do would be to look at more affordable and sensibly priced options. Not to just shove pretty much the most expensive possible option on a card or payment plan and kick the payment down the road just to satisfy a current want. I mean, people are adults and they can choose to do whatever they want with their money, but if a person is on a low income and often decide to treat themselves with the most expensive options then it's no surprise when they continually have to have things on deferred payment because they're always broke (because they made the most expensive choices to make themselves a bit happier temporarily). And so the cycle goes on.
 
GaryH said:
It’s not just the cost of booking the room anymore but the cost of the food and drinks too and I don’t think people realise that yet.

Interestingly in the past you could get the menus for the restaurants in Alton towers up on their website with prices. I’ve not been able to locate them this year. Anyone else find them with prices?
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None of the menus are online anymore, since Aramark took over they seem to have gone.

Probably cause towers will get fed up of updating them every 5 minutes with price rises.
 
BarryZola said:
No one said you can't have nice things if you're on a low income. What was said was that the responsible thing to do would be to look at more affordable and sensibly priced options. Not to just shove pretty much the most expensive possible option on a card or payment plan and kick the payment down the road just to satisfy a current want. I mean, people are adults and they can choose to do whatever they want with their money, but if a person is on a low income and often decide to treat themselves with the most expensive options then it's no surprise when they continually have to have things on deferred payment because they're always broke (because they made the most expensive choices to make themselves a bit happier temporarily). And so the cycle goes on.
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Think the main problem with Towers is that the on-site hotels are the easy option. And the park know that on top of brand power.

For those who go once a year or blue moon, they'll probably want to make it a bit special by staying on-site. That the current quality of it is terrible is not their fault at the end of the day.

Quick look elsewhere and I think a lot depends on accessibility and personal requirements. Closest hotel is an Inn so would many families want to stay there? Could stay in a hostel but how disabled friendly are they?

I don't think it's always so simple to say "there's cheaper options", there's always been cheaper options since the hotels opened but if I think back to a number if visits I stayed on-site we could've easily stayed in the old Uttox Travelodge or other B&Bs but back then it was just a better and easier experience to have in the hotels.

The poverty cycle is a massive issue for the country and needs to be addressed. But I can't afford to take a £400-600 hit for car insurance for example in one go. Especially now with a baby. The pay monthly alternative helps me plan month to month budgets and it's the same with other things. Needed a laptop during lockdown, deferred the payment for a year and then paid monthly until I could afford to pay it off in a lump sum.

In the future though with said kid; it's a different situation all together. But I would be taking them to Efteling over Towers because its probably about the same cost for far better quality.
 
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