Milo Boyd went to check out if £55 for a room at one of the 55 Spoons hotels that are dotted across the UK is good value, or if the price point really is too good to be true
Love it or loathe it, Spoons is a British institution.
The mega-chain has around 800 joints across the UK and raked in £2 billion last year. Everything from its unique-to-the-venue 70s-inspired carpets to its weirdly cheap drinks, from its very outspoken CEO Tim Martin to its ability to buy up grand Victorian buildings and turn them into drinking dens, is etched into the British psyche.
But what you might not know, and what I didn’t, is that Spoons not only runs hotels, but has been doing so since 1998. Its first venue, in Shrewsbury, had 22 rooms for customers as well as the better-known drinking side of the business. Since then, 54 other Spoons Hotels have opened.
Put off by Mr. Martin’s intervention in British politics and the idea that it’s out-competing independent boozers with its mass buying power, in recent years, my trips to Spoons have been limited to bouts of airport necessity and, occasionally, using its bathrooms without buying anything. However, after its hotel was judged to be the most affordable in the country by Which? earlier this month, I decided to put past gripes behind me and give it a go.
On a cold Wednesday in November, I turned up at Thomas Ingoldsby in Canterbury, freezing and bedraggled following a long bike ride from Broadstairs. What I experienced warmed my chilly cockles and turned my view of Spoons on its head.
The offering is, quite simply, incredible. Here is the breakdown:
Price
Clearly price is a strong point in Spoons pubs, and the same is true in its hotels. In the Which? survey it was one of only two hotels to score 4* for value for money, the other being the overall winner, Coaching Inn Group. While Coaching’s average room rate is £128 a night, Spoons charges just £70 on average. A double room at the Thomas Ingoldsby, booked for next Wednesday, is just £55.
I tucked into a £2.99 veggie breakfast in the morning after an evening of £1.89 pints of ale. Both were pretty good. Maybe it’s been too long since I ventured outside the M25, but those prices just seemed absurdly low. In 2025, when stepping outside alone seems to rob you of at least £20, the budget friendliness of this experience was by far the most significant factor.
Vibe
Before my hotel stay, the last time I ventured into a Spoons had me wander into the cavernous and eerily quiet Coronet on London’s Holloway Road. The difference in vibe could not have been more stark on this particular frosty Wednesday night in Canterbury. The drinkers were out in full force in East Kent. University students, groups of jolly OAPs, lone men reading books and eating onion rings. All of life was there.
The hotel rooms are a short flight of stairs from the pub, which means you can easily stumble up at the end of it all or treat yourself to a deli wrap and chips in the bath. A member of staff told me it is possible to rent out a room spur of the moment, although overly drunk guests may be refused.
The room
The room itself was pretty faultless. I’ve been to a lot of budget hotels in my time, and this one was up there with the best of them. The (likely) worst-case scenario when staying at the lower price-range establishments is furniture that’s falling apart, a room that feels dirty and bedbug traces. The best case is a room in which everything feels well looked after, new or new enough, clean and well considered. The Ingoldsby delivered all of that, while having double rooms that were comfortably big enough for an impromptu last-orders party (although I imagine such things aren’t encouraged or allowed).
The room also had a large desk with a well-stocked tea tray, a sizeable TV and a view of Canterbury Cathedral I suspect few hotels in the city could compete with. Only two of the Ingoldsby’s rooms have that view. Not only do those on the other side of the hotel not look out onto the seat of Anglicanism, they’re a little disturbed by morning lorry movements, I was told. If you can bag it, room 110 is the one to get.
After a long, cold day of cycling across Kent, I was happy to discover the thermostat could be turned all the way up to 25 C, and delivered on that promise. It was like being on holiday.
What’s included
Sadly, Spoons hotel does not have an all-inclusive package. Who knows what mania would break loose after that many bottles of Hooch and triple-cooked chips. But the actual offering is not meagre.
Decent Wi-Fi, a couple of packets of biscuits, fresh towels, two bottles of water and enough tea, coffee and hot chocolate sachets to keep you going before check-out at 11. A morning bite is not included, but with breakfasts that cheap, it didn’t seem worth complaining about.
In conclusion
A friend’s wise dad once told me that Spoons is the closest thing to a real social institution that this country has left. As nightclubs go under and members’ societies close, there are fewer and fewer places for people to meet. Spoons might be one of the last remaining true third spaces we have left in the UK, where all sorts from all demographics want to go. And now that it’s delivering rooms this good and cheap as well, it’s even harder to deny its pull.
