Travelodge Dublin Airport Ballymun - Dublin, Ireland 

Good Hotel, so so area!
Posted: Wed, Jul 23 2008
We stayed here for two nights last week. Booking through Travelodge it was a very reasonable ?59 for the room, which is considerably cheaper then anything else we could find near Dublin Airport. The hotel is easy to find, and never having been to Ballymun before I was anxious to see the famous regeneration project..(and a peak at the half built Ikea..oh happy days!). The hotel is in a dodgy enough area, but there is a secure parking which we used. The direct area of the hotel is fine, well lit and has a few bars, takeaways etc. It's not really bad, it's just that aound the corner your confronted with the original and notorious Ballymun flats, still obviously lived in and not very appealing. Plenty of Police patrols as well, but we didn't have any worries once we stuck to the Main thouroughfare and the immediate area of the hotel. Staff very friendly on check in. The room was modern, clean, great beds, and lovley spacious bathroom. There was a bit of noise from the M1 but not enough to bother you. No aircon that we could find, so I 'd imagine it could get stuffy if you kept the windows closed. We actually found them hard to open, but it was a cool night so we just left them shut. We didn't bother with breakfast as we had an early meeting both mornings. Overall, it's a decent, value for money hote, if you can tolerate the area until the regeneration is complete.

Was I in Dublin or Beirut
Posted: Sat, Jul 05 2008
The location of this hotel is in a very run down area of Ireland, the surroundings where more like Beirut than a district of Dublin. It was situated close to the airport but is far from ideal if you want to wander into Dublin Centre. There are no restaurants or pubs nearby and the area is such that I would not have contemplated walking around for fear of my safety. That said the hotel is new and the room was very nice although it was a family room yet there was only one chair to accompany the table. Part way through booking in the receptionist started dealing with another customer who had come to complain that he had booked a room with WiFi access but it was not working and I was left hanging around whilst she dealt with that complaint. Eventually I had to interject otherwise I would have been left there a lot longer. You need your room key to operate the lift, this was not explained by staff and had it not been for other guests we would have been locked in it. As we stayed 2 nights the room key would not operate the lift on the second day as it had ‘lost its charge’. The card had to be reprogrammed on the second day; again the staff should have informed us about that. Finally, the hairdryer cut out during use and would only work after it had cooled down, considering it had only been used a couple of minutes my wife hadn’t finished her hair and it took her 3 attempts to finish it. Handy if you have a short stopover to or from airport as they have a secure underground car park but not somewhere to stay if you are thinking of a stay any longer than overnight.

Instant cofee !!
Posted: Wed, Jun 11 2008
I havent stayed overnight in this hotel but i work quite close to this area and sometimes meet colleagues there before going to meetings etc. My experience of the restaurant/bar area has been that the staff seem more interested in chatting to each other than serving customers . Ive always had at least a 10 minute wait even when its really quiet . On my last visit there I ordered a black coffee priced at almost 3 euro. Although the hotel has up to the minute coffee machines, I was shocked to see the waitress spoon instant coffee into the pot !! Perhaps the machines were out of order but to charge almost 3 euro is disgraceful

Hotel closed down-but new travel lodge was good
Posted: Mon, Jun 09 2008
We booked our stay in the begining of April 2008 with octopus.com . We were most surprised when we turned up at the "ballymun plaza" hotel to find out they had left the premises on 18th april 2008, and the hotel was now a travel lodge, On top of this, the staff at the reception did not know anything about bookings taken whilst it was still the plaza, to be fair to them though, I feel they had been thrown in at the deep end a bit. We rang Octopus who were brilliant and explained travel lodge were accepting all the bookings from the plaza, and they arranged it with receiption, so a bit of a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing (ie the travel lodge head office knew they were accepting bookings but hadn't told their staff who actually had to deal with the customers) The hotel itself was lovely though. Rooms were very clean and spacious. Bathroom was nice, big bath and shower. The ladies on receiption were very helpful as well. The restaurant inside, although now not affiliated as such with the hotel, served excellent food for breakfast and dinner, and very reasonable prices. The hotel is very close to the airport with a taxi costing EUR15-20. You can also get a bus into the city centre for EUR 1.50 each way, which I think is a excellent. There is a Tesco oppisite the hotel, and also a small shopping centre, and a post office. Overall, except from the trouble we had in actually checking in, the stay was very good, and a much higher standard than I would have expected from a travel lodge.