Hull – Ibis City Centre

Just a short walk from Hull’s central railway station, I arrived at the Ibis hotel at 23:59, which is marvellous as I’d already told them I’d arrive at around midnight and asked by e-mail if that was OK. The hotel responded quickly saying that was all fine, although I was slightly nervous that my train might get delayed and so my arrival would be much later.

The staff member was jolly and helpful, and he was also present behind the desk for a good chunk of the five days that I was there. He clearly works hard, especially given he seemed to be doing the night-time hours.

The room, which was clean and well presented. It’s very Ibis brand standard, so there are rarely any surprises here.

And the view from the room….. For anyone interested, which is likely no-one, I took this photo the day after as otherwise it was dark and the photo would have been pointless.

This is my free gift, and to be honest, I’m entirely happy with that. It was a choice of a Mars Bar or a Snickers Bar, and given that this was an Ibis hotel, and one of their cheapest in the brand, I didn’t expect a bottle of champagne. I wouldn’t have turned down a selection of baked goods from Greggs, but this was fine and a handy midnight treat.

This is the free drink I got with my voucher, a pint of Boddington’s. OK, it’s slumming it a bit compared with my normal high quality (or what I call high quality anyway) craft beer intake, but it was still entirely acceptable. I treated myself to some crisps as well, as I felt the beer needed it. I’d add that I saved this for later on during my trip, I didn’t march back down to reception at just gone midnight to drink it.

The breakfast area. Being easily excitable, I like to get to breakfast early in hotels and I admit I didn’t really need to be there at 06:15…. But all of the food and drink was ready and I was able to fight my way through the hordes of other guests.

The hot breakfast selection. There were muffins, cereals and some very cold fruit salad, none of which were exceptional, but they all sufficed.

My first plate of food, along with orange juice, tea (proper flavoured fruit tea, I’m not much of a drinker of breakfast tea and the like) and coffee. The quality of the breakfast ingredients was high, tasty herby sausages, flavoursome tomatoes and hot baked beans. The bacon was excellent, although I spent some time carefully cutting off the fat (I think that irritates Liam, but he wasn’t here, so it doesn’t matter) and had a little pile of that heaped up. The bacon was also rather salty, but I like that, so this was acceptable to me, although I probably gave myself a salt overdose.

I took a photo of this as there were a middle-aged couple in the lift and they asked me why there was a photo of mushy peas and bacon on this poster for breakfast (which reminds me of an old joke about Peter Mandelson). I helpfully posited the idea that it might actually be avocado and bacon on sourdough toast (because that’s what it is), which seemed to confuse them. The reply I got back was “they have avocado for breakfast here?”. I mentioned it was more aspirational than factual, but the lift reached the ground floor and this conversation didn’t go any further.

Anyway, this was another very good stay and my fanboy view of Accor Hotels is unchanged. The rooms were clean, everything was restocked daily, there were no noise issues and the staff were friendly. Given the price point, which was under £40 per night including breakfast, this seemed more than reasonable to me. All rather lovely.