If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Later this month I have a little challenge, as I have to stay in Birmingham, England’s so-called second city, for a week to attend a training course. As usual I am looking for a dog friendly hotel, of course I need internet access from the room and I want to be located quite centrally so that I can walk the dog safely at night on my own. As I am staying there alone I do not want to get ripped off for single room rates, either. When you want to stay in a city you can use one of the price search engines like HotelsCombined to save you time and find a shortlist of places to stay. I was quite pleased when the first search returned 26 hotels, priced from £25 per night. But when I looked at the hotels individually I found that the filter had not worked completely: the first hotel listed stated clearly that pets were not accepted.

So the first listing, the Norfolk Hotel in Edgbaston, was off my list as my dog would not be welcome there. Shame, as it looked like a nice friendly hotel for a woman staying on her own. The next listing was for the centrally located Quality Hotel Birmingham. This hotel is withing five minutes walks from the Botanic Gardens and the main shopping area, and it is also a few minutes away from the canal, where there is a plethora of trendy bars. Of course I will not be visiting those bars since I am a married woman in a strange city on my own - or maybe I should just go along so that i can post a review?

Anyway, I need to check out this Hotel with WiFi in Birmingham. This hotel has its own gardens - handy for a quick walk late at night in safety. It also has a free car park so I can be sure of getting a parking space when I arrive. However internet access costs £5 per hour. I am not impressed by hotels charging for WiFi in this way. Once the connection is installed there are no incremental charges, so they are just using this amenity as a money spinner. The next hotel I checked was the Apollo Hotel, Edgbaston. They also accept pets but their charge for WiFi is a staggering £7.50 an hour. At the risk of repeating myself - this is a service that is becoming the norm in any hotel, and certainly more important than a trouser press. Broadband internet access is not metered so there is no justification for charging guests to use it.

The next hotel fulfils all the essentials: free WiFi Internet access, pets accepted (subject to a charge), and it is right in the heart of the city above one of the best department stores. The only drawback at the Britannia Hotel Birmingham is that there is no hotel car park, but as long as I can be with my dog and get online I will be happy. There is also 24 hour room service so I do not need to leave him alone while I go for dinner. There is a photo of one of the rooms at the top of this story.

Just to see if I could do any better, I checked out hotels.com, and they came up with the Thistle Hotel in Brum - dog friendly, but no mention of Wifi. They do have the ubiquitous trouser press in every room, though!