Savoy Hotel

It feels like a fairly grand hotel when you walk into the reception area, although you can tell that the hotel is well past its heyday and any illusion of grandeur quickly dissipates as soon as you head upstairs.

The hotel has 145 rooms but it feels much bigger with seemingly endless corridors that look like a scene from a horror film.

All the guest rooms all have a work desk, a flatscreen television, tea-and-coffee-making facilities, ironing facilities and an en suite bathroom. However, the bed isn’t very comfortable and everything about the hotel, and the rooms in particular, just feels really dated.

The hotel is run by the Britannia hotel group, which has a reputation for buying up grand hotels and then neglecting them and running them into the ground. The hotel looks like it hasn’t had a refresh since the 1970s and the furnishings and fittings are something that you would be hard-pressed to buy nowadays, let alone find in a hotel (well, maybe at another Britannia hotel).

It is not particularly well maintained either, with mould and peeling paint in many of the rooms. While there has been some attempt to maintain the hotel, it is clear that corners have been cut with wallpaper simply painted over instead of being removed and prepared first and rips in the carpet repaired with duct tape.

Considering that this is a budget hotel, the Savoy has a lot of public areas. These include a large bar area on the ground floor, along with a restaurant and ballroom. These areas initially look quite impressive with chandeliers and architectural features that you would expect from an upmarket hotel in the early 20th century. However, these public areas start to feel a bit tacky once you spot the cheap furniture and tacky posters advertising drinks specials and bingo nights.

While this hotel has its flaws, there is no shortage of bad hotels in Blackpool and you can actually do a lot worse than this one.

Wi-Fi wireless internet access is free in public areas and you need to pay £7 for 24 hours of Wi-Fi access in your room. It is very fast Wi-Fi though.

The hotel doesn’t accept any guests aged under 18, which is probably a good thing as this is the sort of hotel that is likely to give your children nightmares.

The hotel is on Blackpool’s north shore, around 1.6km (1 mile) north of the town centre. Although it is right across the road from the beach, and there are some local shops around a five-minute walk away, there is not a lot of interest in the immediate area around the hotel.

Gynn Square tram stop is right across the road, making it easy to get to other parts of Blackpool. You can also walk into the town centre in around 25–30 minutes.

Free car parking is available in the hotel’s on-site car park, which has 60 spaces including two disabled parking spaces.