This Hotel by far is the most unreasonably priced, unbelieveably dirty & the staff are almost non-existant.
This hotel provided me with a room on the ground floor, no TV remote Control, No Air Con, No Pillows, Dirty Linen. When I complained I was told they cannot do anything.

You must stay away from this hospital.

A trip to London on business is always tricky when it comes to working out whether to drive and park in the centre or park on the outside and catch the Tube. I decided on the latter, and whilst it was only 5 minutes walk from Gants Hill Underground station, the accommodation was very basic. The room needed modernising, you wouldn't have a bath unless you were desparate and the TV had no remote.
There was a pub/restaurant next door which was very affordable but overall, this is as basic a room as you can get. You get what you pay for.

This review refers to the Gants Hill Travelodge, rather than the centrally placed one in Ilford.

We arrived at 4pm, being greeted by a less than informative and a somewhat un-enthusiastic receptionist, located at a reception desk in what could best be described as a dilapidated, tired and run down building in a less than salubrious part of London suburbia. No information was provided about the attached (Harvester) restaurant regarding meal and breakfast times and availability.

The allocated ground floor room was the normal Travelodge layout with a double bed, sofa bed, TV, tea making facilities and en-suite bathroom. This room had clearly seen better days as it was definitely in need of some severe renovation – or preferably, demolition.

First, the bathroom; this featured a bath with chipped and worn enamel, detached bath plug and a wide range of black mould in residence around the tiles. It appeared that the toilet bowl had escaped the attention of bleach, disinfectant and a toilet brush for quite a while.

The bedroom area was in a similar ‘good’ condition. Of the six castors on the bed, the majority were broken. The pillows, although encased in pillowcases, featured a wide range of staining throughout. To continue the ambience, the curtains appeared to have been there since the place was built and again appeared not to have been washed since then. The kettle interior featured an unusual calcite feature as its centre piece and also sported a variety of black speckles to complement the calcite. To complete the tea making facilities, two unmatched cups of different sizes sat nearby, again with a poor standard of cleanliness. The socket for the telephone, was also hanging off the wall. Didn’t get round to trying the TV.

The carpet didn’t look like it had seen a Hoover for years, especially around the edges and under the malformed bed lay a nice supply of antique dust. Indeed, bodily parts from a previous resident, in the form of toe nail clippings, were still visible on the floor. The carpet also featured various stains of unknown origin. The wall also had a worrying brown stain on it as well which was not due to damp – I didn’t investigate further.

Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that these are ‘budget’ rooms so I don’t expect all mod cons and facilities. I have used Travelodge many times before and am aware that consumables such as soap etc are not provided so I have no issues with that, however I do expect an acceptable level of hygiene and cleanliness especially from such a large chain, regardless of the cost. In all honesty, I have never experienced a Travelodge room as bad as this before.

I have photos of all these delights but have chosen not to post them so as not to contravene the 'family friendly' requirement !!

Faced with these horrors, at 4:30pm we left, having secured a room in a nearby Premier Travelinn (a competitor in the budget hotel market). On leaving, as we left we raised our complaint and disgust with the receptionist. As she made no effort to have our concerns addressed by either offering another room or having things cleaned and fixed, I would suspect our’s was not the first complaint – nor is it likely to be the last. She promised me that the manager would phone me to discuss our complaint (he didn’t) as she couldn’t find a complaint form and we were not prepared to wait around any longer while she did.

In summary – avoid like The Plague … or catch it (The Plague that is !) at Gants Hill Travelodge !!

POSTSCRIPT: Travelodge have responded to my complaint, apologising for the poor standard/cleanliness and advised that Gants Hill is due for refurbishment towards the end of 2008. They also acknowledged that cleanliness however is unrelated to refurbishment and will be refunding the cost of my booking.

i was visitng some family, a ncie place, i did go for a walk about and found the area to be quite peceful, the room was very clean and there was a cinema close by which made the trip more exciting. i became a regular at this food palce chicken cottage round the corner, near the mcd's it had a ncie feeling. overall nice place ilford is kool