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Archive for the ‘Premier Inn’ Category

For this year’s holiday in Crete (2017) I flew from Heathrow with BA, and stayed at the Bath Road Premier Inn the night before. I didn’t just book the previous night’s stay with Premier Inn, I booked the complete ‘SleepParkFly’ deal – a single price for the night’s accommodation before the flight, the overnight parking at the hotel, and then the parking while I was away. That seemed to be a good deal so I shall be repeating the exercise for next year’s holiday. This will actually be a bit more complex – I shall be flying out of Gatwick but returning to Heathrow – so I booked the SleepParkFly package at the Bath Road hotel again, and I shall get the National Express coach from Heathrow to Gatwick the morning after (my flight doesn’t leave Gatwick until the afternoon).

I did notice when I booked for next year’s holiday (2018) that the price for the SleepParkFly package had gone up quite a bit. However I thought it was still a good deal – it included vehicle drop-off and pick-up at the terminal, so no messing about with shuttle buses from distant car parks.

I’m now in the early stages of booking a holiday in Rome in the early summer/late spring and again the BA prices and flight times from Heathrow look attractive, so repeating the SleepParkFly exercise looked tempting. When I tried to check the cost I couldn’t find any prices quoted, however. So I did a bit of digging and found the following comment on the the Premier Inn website: “We’re not currently taking new Sleep Park Fly bookings at our Heathrow hotels.

Doing a bit more digging, I learned that in fact Premier Inn’s SleepParkFly partner at Heathrow, Purple Parking, went into administration in early November. They were then saved by another company, Holiday Extras, and as a result of the rescue Purple Parking are continuing to trade. (Here’s a link to a press release on the Holiday Extras website.) Obviously, however, the new owners and Premier Inn have not so far been able to reach agreement about new bookings so the arrangement has broken down.

Interestingly, however, Premier Inn continue to offer SleepParkFly packages at their hotels at other airports – Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted. Perhaps Purple Parking weren’t involved in those arrangements? But let’s hope that Premier Inn can reach agreement with a provider at Heathrow, as I felt that it was a good service.

 

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