New to motels, I'd never seen how they work before. You probably know better than me. I was with a seasoned business traveller who said you get no surprises, easy parking, no thought requried, and room to work on papers in the evening.
.the free swimming pool is very unusual so I give a 5* qype rating.
You give your room number to the boys in the health spa who lend you a towel. Take a pound coin as a locker deposit, and you're away: you can swim about amid the sales managers on their monthly conferences and the lost tourists. There is even some kind of spin dryer for wet boxer shorts. It's a small pool but not many guests have cracked the code of how to use it for free. Entrance is near reception, which you can probably find your way back to via the identical corridors and stairs passing other lost tourists on the way. I didn't have a pound coin but no sales managers pinched my shoes so it didn't matter; if I'd bought a wallet it might have been different. Drop your towell in the bin in the wall opposite the health spa reception.
.the bar is unusual
Very old looking suffolk beams re-assembled inside a characterless shell. Surprisingly successful. Beer reasonably priced; wine expensive. Sometimes there are stacks of The Independant newspaper for free on the left as you walk-in, and staff will leave one outside your door in the morning. I think that's free if you sign-up to the mailing list, but it could be free anyway.
Holiday Inn may do cheap deals for rooms, but breakfast is too expensive at £8 and even WiFi is £3. There is a large Tesco round the corner so I suppose you could get a Value potnoodle or even a Value microwave or toaster and set-up a door-to-door breakfast service, but they'd probably chuck you out for that last bit and you migt have to find the smoke alarm and wrap something round it to use a toaster.
If you're travelling with others and want a cheap characterless breakast deal, the garden centre in Woodbridge near tourist information had a 2 for £5 breakfast offer advertised only to people driving-in. Vegetarians catered for. Vegans possibly at a push.
Another reviewer stated that there wasn't much else close to the hotel. True. When I forced myself to look beyond the car park I saw some rather lovely fields and hedges and things, but the site of a car park and an A road has to be overlooked. For a pound or two more you can stay at the Holiday Inn Orwell which is more exciting because it is in a trading estate rather than a field next to a road junction, but if I were going to Suffolk again I'd plan a route past one of the pubs that has cheap rooms above it. There's one in Sudbury that's even cheaper than a motel. It may be much worse, but a motel is only novel once, and I've had the experience. On the other hand if you want a motel in a car park with no breakfast or wifi, this one has a free swimming pool so 5*.
If you want to shop around hotel-booking sites, you might want to start on a cashback site like http://topcashback.co.uk/ref/employees : alpha rooms is one of their cashback links. read more