Tag: Tune HotelsView All Tags
Hotel Openings / Scotland Hotels / UK Hotels / Edinburgh Hotels / Tune Hotels / Budget Hotels / → All Tags
In a first for the hotel chain and for Scotland, Tune Hotels opened up their first Scottish property last week welcoming thrifty travelers in the city to check out the umpteen castles, Edinburgh has to offer. It's a first for Scotland and a first in the new design for the hotel chain.
Last summer we told you of plans to bring the discount chain to Scotland, and now everything is official. The brand brings to the city, a la carte pricing for which they have become famous. Want towels? That's £1.50 extra. Room cleaning? £7 per day. Ability to watch some TV? £3 per day.
For those that can plan in advance, you'll see the cheapest rates. Room rates start at £25, but will skyrocket as the cheap rooms sell out. On a recent search in April, we found a double room without windows for £50 ($80) and a room with a view for £80 ($128). Once you start adding any normal hotel amenities, the price is comparable to local hotels.
Hotel News / Hotel Openings / Bangkok Hotels / Thailand Hotels / Indonesia Hotels / Tune Hotels / Hotel Construction / → All Tags
With big things happening for Tune Hotels in the UK and Australia, it kind of makes sense that the expansion waves would also carry over to Asia, where the chain is actually based.
This September, Tune will open its third Thailand hotel, a 130-room outpost on Bangkok's Sukhumvit Soi 14, a few blocks away from Lumphini Park, and encircled by pricier hotel choices like Westin Grand Sukhumvit, Grand Millennium Sukhumvit and Sheraton Grand Sukhumvit.
But while basic rooms at those places generally go for around $150-$220 USD, Tune will be swinging into town with rates of just $15 USD/night.
Tune Hotels / Australia Hotels / Melbourne Hotels / Sydney Hotels / Airport Hotels / Budget Hotels / Hotel News / → All Tags
The Sydney Morning Herald reported the other week that Tune has plans for hotels in both Melbourne and near the Sydney Airport.
Tune's first Australian venture, 235 rooms in Melbourne's Swanston Street, is due to open in August next year....
The Melbourne hotel will be followed by a 250-room property at Sydney Airport and is linked to AirAsiaX's new daily flights from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur.
Hotel News / Tune Hotels / UK Hotels / Olympics Hotels / 2012 Olympics Hotels / London Hotels / Liverpool Hotels / Beatles Hotels / → All Tags
Despite just having opened a new branch on Liverpool Street last week, Tune Hotels is now aiming for yet another two new hotels in London between now and the start of the Olympics. And don't think they'll be taking a break after that, either. Oh no. CEO Mark Lankester told The Star that though the Olympics is good for business, "we are in [it] for the long term."
What this means is rapid expansion throughout the rest of the UK. And now we've gotten a few more details on the upcoming hotels, the first of which Lankester confirmed would pop up in Edinburgh and Liverpool (the city, not the London street) by 2013. And just to throw in a little extra excitement, he added: "With a name like Tune Hotels, we have to have one in the birthplace of the Beatles."
Starting tomorrow through Friday, the hotel will release 1,000 room nights at the Liverpool Street Hotel for just 2p! The two-penny rooms can be booked for select dates from opening day, January 4, all the way through May 27.
The race for the low rate begins at 8am London time and all you have to do is head to the Tune UK website, www.tunehotels.com/uk, search for a discounted room and click the BOOK NOW button. If you can't find a date that has a 2p rate on the website, you can also look on the Tune Hotel’s Facebook and Twitter pages for some clues as to which dates are still open.
London Hotels / Cheap Hotels / Budget Hotels / Travelodge Hotels / Mint Hotels / Tune Hotels / easyHotels / → All Tags
Last week The New York Times’ Frugal Traveler got scammed after booking an apartment on Craigslist and that sucks. So being the nice people that we are we thought we’d give you a list of cheap London hotels so you don’t have to trawl for a cheap flat and end up getting burnt. Also worth noting: people in London use Gumtree over Craigslist, anyways.
Tune Hotel Westminster
The Tune Hotel Westminster is one of our favourite cheap hotels. It has everything you need from a budget hotel – a bed and a bathroom. There’s also a TV, but, like everything else you need to pay to use it. Even with all of the extras, though, it still works out pretty cheap: under £60 when we stayed there.
For being the hotel snobs that we are, we actually dig the "no frills" concept of Tune Hotels. And despite having a room that was only slightly larger than a sleeper cabin on a train, we really enjoyed our stay at the Tune Hotel Westminster in London. The price was right and the room was rather cozy.
But the one thing that did sort of irk us was all the add-ons that the hotel charges, mostly before you even get there.
However, Tune is finally doing away with one fee--the room administration fee. In conjunction/celebration of the new Tune Hotel Bintulu opening in Malaysia, Tune Hotel is dropping this fee across all 12 properties starting today. And you can thank Tune expansion for that.
Back in March we brought you news that Tune Hotels were planning to take over the world or well, at least the UK with 15 hotels planned for London alone by 2017. And from what we hear it would seem the take over has already begun.
We heard it from the horse’s mouth, aka Naushad Jivraj, who owns the franchise for the group in London and he has confirmed that the next two sites have been secured.
The second Tune Hotel to open will be located in Liverpool Street, one of the busiest transport hubs in East London and an ideal location for the 2012 Olympics. The hotel will have 180 rooms and is due to open sometime next year.
So the Tune Hotel Westminster has been open just about a month now, and the TripAdvisor reckoning is here. The verdict of the people? Actually pretty similar to what HotelChatter said when we stayed there last month – as long as you know what to expect, for the money you’re paying, it’s pretty damn good.
The thing people keep mentioning? Obviously, it’s the size of the rooms – “REALLY REALLY SMALL” as one person puts it.
On the plus side, beds are deemed comfy, rooms clean, showers fabulous (as we said) and the hotel quiet.
On the minus, uhm, the rooms are small, and one review mentions a “constant hum of air throughout the night”. The only negative review is from someone who was stuck in the windowless basement room, who complains about a generator pumping out smelly fumes all night, but according to the hotel (they’ve replied to the review already) this was a one off problem that’s now been fixed.
So it wasn't too hard to guess yesterday's hotel snapshot but for those of you
who are reading this after the Labor Day Weekend who couldn't get it, allow us to take you inside The Tune Hotel Westminster.
Yes, HotelChatter managed to land in London just two days after the hotel's official opening. Thus we expected lots of fanfare and excitement on the property when we arrived. But when our friend dropped us off at 11pm at night, we had a drunk man carrying an open beer can accost us for money.
Nevertheless we scurried inside as fast as we could to check-in. Actually to be precise, we tried to open the door but you need a key to get in. Fortunately, another hotel guest was right behind us and was able to let us in. (You can also ring the front desk to let you in.)
We've been anxiously awaiting the opening of The Tune Hotel Westminster in London on August 30, which will be the first of many Tune Hotels planned for London in the next decade. Room rates are advertised for as low as 35₤ a night yet when we looked our pending London stay we found a room for 55₤ a night instead.
That's still a great deal but that isn't where the room rate ends. Remember Tune Hotels is a "no frills" sort of budget hotel and if you want the amenities you're accustomed to in a hotel, you're going to have to pay for them one by one. As you can see in the picture above, towels and toiletries cost an extra 1.50₤ a stay. Unlimited use of the hair dryer is 1₤. Unlimited TV use is 10₤.
Only a few more weeks left until The Tune Hotel Westminster in London opens on August 30 and if you haven't got your penny room, the hotel is now promising another clever way to win something at the hotel.
Tune has recently taken to plastering London taxi cabs, inside and out, with ads for their new London property. On their Facebook profile, they tease us with this:
These cabs are going around London mate! Get in them and take a pic of yourself and post it on our page, you never know what you might get for it if we like it ;)