Cycling UK Forum

A few days ago I spent a couple of nights in the Exeter Airport Hampton-by-Hilton hotel, paid for I hasten to add in connection with my work. The Hampton is a sort of upmarket Travelodge for the business user. It was a disturbing experience.

On the way home I tried to work out why anyone would pay £70 a night to stay in such a shiny, dull and anodyne place when, for the same price, it would be possible to book into a top-of-the-range characterful bed and breakfast with an actually hot breakfast served at a table. The answer, I concluded, was speed and convenience, both of which in the case of this hotel were remarkable. It wasn't just the speed and convenience of booking: to my mind it was the convenience of not having to adapt to somewhere new. The hotel was just four weeks old - brand spanking new in fact. And yet as completely undemanding as an old pair of slippers. There was simply nothing to adapt to, to get used to, to wait for or to get to know. The decoration said nothing, the architecture said nothing, the food said nothing. There was nothing personal about it - no-one to be thanked or congratulated for it. It demanded nothing of the guest - everything was provided instantly, seamlessly and effortlessly. The shower worked perfectly, the lifts hummed and the air conditioning meant not even having to open a window. For the guest it was no-brainer. And that's the point - it did not require you in any way to use your brain. One could breeze in, breeze out and disappear without ever having thought about anything bar one's work and appointments - the perfect business hotel. Or a complete nightmare.

The windows, in fact, couldn't be opened. One was not going to be troubled by the sweet smelling hedgerows, the blackbirds singing and the waft of warm June air: the air conditioning set itself to a perfectly dull whatever-you-wanted - the same in spring, summer, autumn and winter - never too cold, never too hot. Edward Thomas could never have written a Hampton version of Adlestrop. At night, the security lights in the car park rent through the darkness so that it was necessary to use a black-out blind to sleep. But the midsummer early sunrise was thus also blacked out. I was told that the air conditioning was necessary due to the windows being closed which in turn was due to the noise of the nearby A30. The same business persons who arrived in their air-conditioned cars unwittingly caused their own discomfort. But then I expect they didn't mind.

The very smart, fresh new staff with their fresh new smiles smoothed the experience of the stay - everything was perfect as long as nothing was reflected upon too deeply. The hotel connects with its car park. Its car park connects to the access roads. The access roads connect to the dual carriageway A30. It in turn connects with a narcotic array of supermarkets, fast food outlets and the air conditoned shops of petrol stations selling the very brands promoted by the very same grey-suited business people staying at the Hampton-by-Hilton. The Hampton was determindly neutral. It said nothing about itself. All was superficial to an extreme. It was utterly single-minded in its delivery of the convenient and undemanding. And yet its real values resonated from every comfortable and relaxing sofa and leaked from every sweetly folded sheet of lavatory paper.

Somewhere around the Hampton-by-Hilton is the world to which it doesn't belong: a world of ordinariness, of people walking and working in normal hot, cold smelly air. Of old roads that are a little slow, of people who you might just stop and talk to but who might not smile back. Of houses that grew up there. Of people who do things because they like to do them, not because they want to remind you of how quick, convenient and up-to-date they are. Of doors that need to be pushed if they are to open, of air that isn't conditioned. Definitely my world.

Careful, next thing that you know you will be selling up your house and buying an old mill in Wales to live in.

.

Good article, although I thought your original title "The Modern World" was better as it's not just hotels but clothes, food, cars, houses, music, and lots of other aspects of modern life where eccentricity and individuality - things the British have traditionally been good at - are no longer valued very much. Bring back Fawlty Towers.

Incidentally,Travelodge (don't know about Hampton-by-Hilton) is a service where you can take bikes - even several bikes - into your room without the slightest hassle. That's a plus.

horizon wrote:A few days ago I spent a couple of nights in the Exeter Airport Hampton-by-Hilton hotel ...

And I for one am glad that you took the time to post what you did.

Thank you.

Beautifully written and described.

Thank you.

gaz wrote:An interesting review but you seem to have missed a key point for forum members.

I arrived by bike and left by bike but to describe the experience would have taken another whole page. It was absolutely bizarre, rather like cycling across a motorway - you are cutting ninety degrees across the grain. There was in fact a brand new covered cycle shelter (for staff) which I happily used. But what was the point? The whole area around the hotel is to be sacrificed to the development of Exeter Airport and its associated businesses. It is development based essentially around the movement of cars. Clyst Honiton, the local village consists of one road, a school and a few more houses behind it: it has now got a huge by-pass. It is madness on an unrestricted and mammoth scale - like walking across the battlefield of Kursk: one person on a bicycle is just a fly on the windscreen. Hotels like the Hampton can "do" bicycles just as Tesco can do free range eggs: their momentum is fuelled by sales and profits. Who they sell to and what they sell is irrelevant and that's why the Hampton in my view has no heart, no feelings and no values apart from profit. And that's why nothing must come between the hotel and its customer, nothing must interrupt the ruthless provision of convenience or their cosy and mutually exploitative relationship. To question anything or to say anything meaningful would create cracks in the illusion: this world of customer-driven convenience is unsustainable, inhuman and dishonest. Air conditioning, the cutting off of oneself from normality and reality, speaks volumes about it.

The most awful thing is that Devon has bought into the illusion of seamless, car based development hook, line and sinker. It is now as we speak tearing out its own heart to smooth the passage of the business motorist onto the road to nowhere. There are in fact new cycle paths around the airport just as there field hospitals on a battlefield. Not to be scoffed at but a bit irrelevant really.

Thanks for your write-up, it was a real pleasure to read an article that was so well written.

You asked why anyone would want to stay there. A very good question. I sometimes have to stay overnight for work and my choice of places to stay is limited to the establishments that I am allowed to book through the civil service booking system. It makes no provision for staff who want to stay in a b&b as it limits places to Premier Inn / Hilton / Jury's Inn etc chain hotels. When I had to stay at Cirencester last autumn it took me a whole day and countless phone calls to get the permission to stay in a b&b which was not only nearer to the place that I was working at the next day, but which saved the taxpayer £30 (and saved me a night in a hotel such as you've just described...)

Utter madness

horizon wrote:... The most awful thing is that Devon has bought into the illusion of seamless, car based development ...

I don't think it's an illusion. It's transportation, like the canals, then the railways, that helped power the industrial revolution a long time ago and, dare I say, improve our standard of living (as measured the way these things are and not necessarily one's personal measurement) and make the nation competitive. We still have the railways of course, but unfortunately we don't see the slightest natural beauty in acres of asphalt and seas of motor vehicles because there is none. Even modern ferry ports have a kind of rugged attraction which places such as you describe do not possess.

One would hope there is a payoff somewhere along the line - macro-economically, in terms of benefits passed on to other areas of life such as health, education, housing, etc. A nation doing business and able to afford the things that count towards quality of life. Otherwise we go backwards and become a backward nation that failed to compete in the wider world (it will be interesting to see what happens to France over the next decade or so - they once paid a big price for being too squeamish when we were not).

The "old road" along the south coast through Devon is a road I drove almost every single weekend for six months back in 1980 between Plymouth and Portsmouth. I knew it so well, I could have driven it blindfold.

My driving pre-dates the Bridport bypass, the Dorchester bypass, the M27 and all the dual carriageways except for at the Hampshire end ............ sorry, the Honiton bypass was in place, but it was quicker and easier to use the town centre.

S Devon/S Dorset are hardly recognisable nowadays. All eaten up by massive roads.

It's quite interesting that we are now talking about roads. This hotel (like Macdonalds drive "thru"s etc) is intrinsically linked linked to new roads, not just in a physical sense but because they too represent seamless, effortless, convenience. But this is a world far removed from the daily experience of most of us. I certainly don't think it is realistic or sustainable: really and truly the Blackdown Hills had to be sacrificed to a new road, the extension of this A30. When they weren't, everything had to go back into the melting pot. The next traffic jam is just up the road - the convenience is a cruel myth.

BTW I also wanted to add that as far as the Hampton was concerned, the staff were great and I don't want to tar them with the same brush. They were genuinely cheerful and helpful and I think rightly proud of their new hotel. I also don't really want to knock the hotel completely: it is an efficient and effective business tool. One day it will be as quaint a part of our culture as a thatched cottage. But that will be when the landscape around is littered with unfinished road projects, malfunctioning and unrepairable air conditioning and lifts and the windows have been made to open at last. How we will smile at our human folly!

I am a frequent business traveller and I prefer these shiny, identical, modern chain hotels to the traditional ones because:
In the modern ones, the room size is generally large, there is a good sized car park, you can eat close to the hotel, there is a desk in the room which is essential because I work in my room at night, there is internet access which is essential because of my work, the hotel interior is generally clean with fixtures and fittings in good condition.

I do stay in non modern chain hotels but I have so far found in 6 years only 5 throughout the country that I would choose in favour of a modern chain hotel.
Staying in non modern chain hotels, (75% of the ones I have stayed in I would not stay in again), I have had such delights as tired decoration, no desk in the room, try working on a laptop while sitting on the bed, no internet access, no car park, parking on the street and ensure you move the car by 08:30 due to parking restrictions, tiny rooms thay you couldn't swing a cat in, sloping floors in old hotels with character.

I'm afraid that I now use "Premier Inns" as my yardstick as they all have virtually identical rooms and suit me.

Why do I feel so strongly that it is a Faustian pact?

I'm with wrangler-rover. I like the bland chains because they provide decent rooms at a reasonable price. My last experience of a "quaint" B&B was in Devon, where I had to stand under a tree for an hour in a cataclysmic downpour because I'd arrived "too early" at the B&B (4pm) and she wouldn't let me in.

It's a pity that the UK chains haven't yet followed the US/OZ/NZ motel model and fitted mini-kitchens into the rooms.

gordy wrote:I'm with wrangler-rover.

And not just with wrangler-rover, Doctor Faust.