Description: The Holiday Inn although off the main airport grounds is only a five-minute drive to the South Terminal (another five/ten minutes to the North Terminal. We’d booked two; one night stays (one at each end of the holiday) with car parking in between. Being able to park your car at your hotel for fifteen days is a bonus at Gatwick and having hot to reception we were advised that the care would be moved to a more secure site but would be back at the hotel by the time we returned. That seemed fine by us and we just needed to remember to leave our car keys with reception when we checked out the next morning.
I’m sure you’ll know this but it’s worth reiterating we always take a second key ring so that we can take the car key off our main bunch of house keys. It’s really not a good idea to leave your house keys as well as the care keys with the hotel. It would just be inviting potential problems and no doubt invalidates your house insurance if anything did go awry in your absence.
Anyway back to the hotel!
It’s a typical Holiday Inn design, so you won’t have too much difficulty finding it if you keep on the main Gatwick/Horley road. We stopped at the front to unload our luggage (although this is really only for coaches and we later found there is a back entrance which is perfectly accessible from the car park).
Hotel reception was in a utilitarian design and although there were plenty of people behind the counter the main problem was that all the receptionists were from Eastern European countries and had thick accents with limited English. Not the best qualities for a busy airport hotel! We however, were checked in without too much of a problem and then found our way to the third floor by way of one of the three lifts. As we turned out of the lift the longest hotel corridor I’ve ever seen was stretched out before us and there are no prizes for guessing where our room was situated. Yes, right at the end, last room but one. At least there would be very little passing trade and we should have an undisturbed night that is except for the airplanes.
The room was adequate although it only comprised of a standard double bed there was an additional double settee, a television, trouser press and a mini bar. Perfectly adequate for a nights stay. Throughout the night we did hear the places but at around 1am there was a terrible banging in our room; the mini bar was performing some early alarm routine all of its own. Frightened the life out of me and we both jumped out of bed in a strange act of self-preservation. We opened it, pushed the bottles around and then shut it again and that resulted the next morning when checking out being told we owed £2-50 for crisps from the mini bar. It was, however, easily resolved as I denied having had anything from the mini-bar and that was accepted by the receptionist.
On our return to the UK we once again stayed at the Holiday Inn and this time we were given a ground floor room. Not a good idea! This room backed onto the car park and was alongside a busy open access corridor from the car to the hotel reception. As you can imagine it continued to be noisy throughout the night.
If staying at this Holiday Inn I’d recommend that you always ensure you get a room on one of the higher floors.
Close