Hugo-nominated fan artist, Dave Howell, is in the UK at the moment. He’s attending some sort of conference at a hotel in Hinckley. Much to his surprise, he discovered that the place is a famous fannish venue, but having read my Eastercon report he realized that the place has changed a lot. Some of you may know this, but I haven’t been to Hinckley for several years and it was news to me, so I thought I would share it. Dave says:
So I was curious enough to follow links back to your entire trip report for the 2001 National Convention. Good lord! We’re in the same hotel! I would never have recognized it from your description if you hadn’t mentioned the “Hackney Carriage Museum.”
It’s now the Barceló Hinckley Island Hotel, and has clearly been completely redecorated. No more Atlas/Neptune, no more flickering lamps. The bar still has wooden beams, but it’s been re-themed the Triumph bar, featuring a Triumph motorcycle behind the bar and various motor parts in the windows. The restaurant food seems reasonable. I haven’t heard too much complaining, and given that this convention is a crowd for whom “organic” food is generally a minimal standard (one attendee is a raw food vegan, for example), that means they’re doing fairly well.
I could totally go for an Eastercon in a hotel that had a motorbike theme. We could make Jon Courtenay Grimwood the Guest of Honour.
By the way, if anyone in London has a spare room and can put up a couple of traveling fans from the US Sun/Mon/Tue next week then Dave and Eric would be very grateful. Let me know and I’ll put you in touch.
We went to Redemption there a few years ago. The acoustics in the Triumph bar were atrocious, you could hardly hear the person stood next to you. Not helped by two large TV screens tuned to different channels, one sport and one music. It is a big long low dark modern bar, taking in the original pub, most of the working space behind it, the little shop and the salon.
The reception area has been opened out as part of the same work, to make one big space running along the front of the hotel. There was a Costa-type coffee bar in there, which also created a lot of noise. It appeared to be managed separately from the hotel, and was advertised from the road as a service stop. It was not fan-friendly – they didn’t like you sitting there if you weren’t consuming, or moving seats around to allow disabled access, or singing, even at night.
The cheap food was vile, the worst it’s ever been. The management at that time (which I believe may have changed since) plainly didn’t want us there, and effectively told Judith to go and never darken their doors again.
I wouldn’t mind popping back to see what it’s like now, as they were planning more work. And I miss that fish restaurant across the road …
We were in Hinckley for the 2006 Discworld Convention and while a lot of the hotel had changed, it still wasn’t enough for us to consider going there again. We’re four years on, of course, and that’s a lifetime in the hotel industry, but, motorbike or no motorbike, it still isn’t a great bar. The hotel still flooded in 2006, but that wasn’t really the reason we have no plans to return. The big issue was the staff and the feeling we had that they had no wish for us to be there. They were also, in general, pretty awful. One of the great things about the Birmingham Hilton was the high standard of staff.
However, good news is good news, of course, but as the DWcon is quite happy where it is, I’ll let someone else test the waters first. 🙂
Pretty much what Brian says – they’ve ‘gone upmarket’, and have apparently no wish to have fans around when high-spending 20-somethings bring better income.
I also have dealings with the Oxford Hotel, which is pretty similar. Very anodyne, modern and soulless.
The last Redemption Convention we ran there was in 2007, it’ll be the one that Fran mentions. Terrible atmosphere in the Triumph Bar, it was the only bar from which they could sell the bottled real ales we had arranged for, and people would dash in, buy an armful of bottles and escape as quickly as possible. However, it was the change in the attitude of the management that really made the hotel no longer viable as a con venue. They just didn’t want us there any more and made that clear. I don’t think we even asked them for a quote for the ’09 Redemption, and we are happily ensconced in the Britannia in Coventry now.