The reason Shae and I paused our 50 state road trip to fly across the Atlantic was because one of my best friends since childhood was getting married.
The wedding was in the quaint town of Arundel which is about an hour from where my parents live. Knowing that we’d likely want a few drinks that afternoon and evening, we decided to stay in Arundel overnight and take a taxi to and from the reception.
The evening reception was at the White Swan Inn and they’d negotiated a price of £110 (~$145 USD) for wedding guests. We try to save money as best we can as we’re on a $100 per day budget, so I looked for local options using some of our hotel points.
About 5-10 minutes down the road was the Comfort Inn Arundel. Comfort Inn is one of Choice Hotels’s brands and was good value using points, so I booked us in for a night there.
We only stayed for one night, but we got a fairly good idea of what the hotel had to offer, so here’s a review of the Comfort Inn Arundel.
Check-In
After going for a late lunch with some friends at the local Beefeater (a restaurant chain, not the Tower of London guards 😉 ), Shae and I got to the hotel at about 5:30 pm.
Jana checked us in and the entire process only took a couple of minutes.
In the US, my understanding is that Comfort Inns include breakfast in your room rate, but that’s seemingly not the case in the UK. There was a sign at the front desk advising that breakfast would be £5 per person if paying when checking in or £7 per person on the day ($6.50 / $9.25 respectively). Their website says it costs £12.75 ($17), but that seems to be for non-hotel guests.
Knowing that we’d likely appreciate a cooked breakfast in the morning, we decided to save a few quid and paid up front. Once that was done, Jana handed over our keys to room 204.
The Comfort Inn Arundel only has two floors and I don’t believe it has an elevator, so we took the stairs up to our room.
Bedroom
When entering the room, the bedroom was straight ahead and the bathroom was to the right. To turn on the lights, we first had to put one of the room keys in the slot on the right hand side. I think it’s to ensure lights aren’t left on when you leave the room, thereby saving electricity, and is a feature that’s fairly common at hotels in the UK. At some hotels, using a business card works but I didn’t try that here.
Immediately on the left was a closet that only contained a few hangers. I think you have to ask the front desk if you want to borrow an iron and ironing board.
To the right of the closet was a small bench where you could place your luggage, along with a wall-mounted hairdryer.
To the right of that was a desk and a padded chair that was more like a chair you’d find at a dining table rather than an office chair.
On top of the desk was tea and coffee making facilities and I was pleased to see PG Tips teabags (my favorite). There were also a couple of small vanilla biscuit (cookie) spoons to dip in your tea. Seeing as this is the UK, there was an electric kettle and instant coffee rather than a coffee maker.
To the right of the desk was a two-person sofa and a wall-mounted TV. Arundel doesn’t seem to be a hotbed for crime, but there was a sign on the wall asking you not to tamper with the TV.
Opposite the sofa was an armchair and coffee table.
Air conditioning isn’t very common in the UK as the weather is fairly temperate year-round. As a result, there was only a wall-heater rather than an air conditioning unit.
I’d booked a room with a king bed, but I’m fairly certain this wasn’t as large as that. I’d say it barely even qualified as a queen bed – more like slightly larger than a double.
After doing a search on Google, it looks like king beds in the UK are slightly smaller than queen beds in the US, so don’t expect too much space when booking a king.
The bed was pretty firm and the pillows weren’t amazing, but I still slept well overnight. There weren’t lamps on the bedside tables, but there was one above each side of the bed (not shown in the photo below).
Bathroom
When entering the bathroom, the sink and countertop was on the right hand side. There wasn’t a small bar of soap by the sink; instead, there was a wall-mounted handsoap dispenser. I’m fine with that as it always seems like a waste of soap when we only use a bar for one night.
In the middle of the bathroom was the toilet and a heated towel rail.
The toilet paper situation was a little weird as housekeeping only seemed to leave a couple of partial rolls. When going down to the front desk that night to ask for more though, I was handed another roll which was exactly the same size.
To the left of the toilet was a bathtub with shower. In the UK, handheld shower heads in hotels are much more common than in the US. The shower did have good water pressure though.
Rather than having bottles of shampoo and conditioner and bars of soap, there was one lone dispenser containing a shampoo/shower gel mix. They also didn’t provide washcloths, something else that seems to be common at many British hotels.
Breakfast
The next morning we went for breakfast at about 9:15 am as it’s served between 8 am and 10 am. That’s when it’s served on weekends; during the week it’s 7 am to 9 am. We gave our room number to the attendant to verify that we’d already paid for breakfast when checking in.
The Comfort Inn Arundel breakfast buffet was fairly substantial, with a good amount of hot options.
The food was tasty, especially seeing as bacon and sausages in the UK are far better than in the US.
If you don’t want scrambled eggs, they offer poached eggs as an option too.
If you don’t feel like getting out of bed, you can pay £3 ($4) to have breakfast brought to you as room service.
Amenities
The Comfort Inn Arundel isn’t exactly overladen with amenities, but we didn’t need it to be either. There’s no swimming pool or fitness room, although there is a bar which is far more fun 😉
If you have any emergency snackage needs, there’s a vending machine by the hotel entrance. Next to the vending machine are leaflets with information about attractions in the local area. I used to live in East Sussex and worked in West Sussex and had no idea there was so much fun stuff to do nearby.
On a nice day, there’s some outdoor seating you can enjoy with family and friends.
Pet-Friendliness
The Comfort Inn Arundel isn’t a pet-friendly hotel. That didn’t matter for our stay for once seeing as we didn’t bring Truffles over to the UK with us.
Service
Service was pretty good. Jana was friendly when checking in and the guy at the front desk that night was also friendly.
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi at the hotel was free and required a password which was given in the keycard holder. The internet speed was OK and had a good connection.
Location
The Comfort Inn Arundel is just off the A27 and is about halfway between Worthing and Bognor Regis. There’s a McDonalds, BP and Subway right outside and a Beefeater restaurant about 0.25 miles down the road.
The center of Arundel is only a couple of miles away, so it only takes about 5 minutes to get there by car. The town itself is on the edge of the South Downs National Park, so it’s a nice area to drive around.
Parking
It’s free to park at the hotel and there seemed to be plenty of spaces for guests.
Cost
We booked our stay using 10,000 Choice Privileges points. The number of points you have to use varies depending on the day of the week and time of year.
If we’d paid cash, the room would’ve cost £79 ($105). That means we got 1.05cpp (cents per point) of value which is pretty good for Choice Privileges points.
Final Thoughts
Our stay at the Comfort Inn Arundel was perfectly fine. The bedroom was fairly spacious, the breakfast was good and the service was friendly.
The bed was smaller than we’d been expecting, but that’s due to UK sizing compared to the US rather than being the fault of the hotel. It was a little firmer than I prefer but I still slept well.
In terms of improvements, I’d have liked a washcloth, separate shampoo and shower gel (having them in separate dispensers would be fine), as well as better toilet paper. Overall though, the hotel was a good option for our one night stay.
Our Rating
Room = 4.0 / 5
Hotel Amenities = 2.4 / 5
Food = 4.5 / 5
Location = 4.3 / 5
Service = 4.2 / 5
Overall Value = 4.3 / 5
Total = 3.95 / 5
(n.b. It seems a little unfair that the overall score was less than 4, but it was dragged down by the score of 2.4 for amenities. That’s because there was no fitness room, swimming pool, guest laundry, business center, ice machine, etc. If you don’t need those during a stay, I’d rate it more as 4.25/5 overall.)
Address
Comfort Inn, A27/A284 Crossbush, Arundel, BN17 7QQ, England
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