Campanile Hotel Glasgow - Good Hotel in a Sketchy Neighborhood

This was originally written in 2005.

On a recent trip to UK, we stayed at Campanile Hotel Glasgow.

Location

The Campanile Hotel is located close to the center of the city, but it is south-west of it, close to river Clyde. The location is good and bad. The fact that it is walking distance to the center is a good thing. However, the actual neighborhood where this hotel is located is sketchy and looks slightly desolate.

Our window had a view on the parking lot, river Clyde, a large crane and a small round casino.

Be advised that in the afternoon the traffic can slow down to a crawl if you come from either M8 motorway or from Dumbarton direction (A-road, don't remember the number). We were coming from Inveraray through Dumbarton and our Renault Modus was barely moving at 2.30pm. It took more than an hour to get to the hotel from the suburbs.

I estimate (without exaggeration) that pedestrians were moving about twice as fast as our car. And I thought LA traffic was bad!

Rooms

The parking lot is free for hotel customers; others have to pay 20 British pounds (about $38). The hotel itself is modern, features two large elevators, electronic locks on the doors and reasonably sized rooms and bathrooms.

The rooms are modern and have decent sound insulation. Our double room had a little sofa-like seating device, a table and a TV set. The electric teakettle and tea/coffee/creamer/sugar tray was also present, just like in any other hotel or B&B in Scotland.

The door opens by using a card with perforation (the lock is electronic). In the room, they employ a strange electrical system where you have to insert your card into a slot on the wall in your room in order to use the lights or AC jacks. Remove the card and the light turns off within seconds. I found out that you can insert any card, even a piece of cardboard and be able to have electricity without worries of forgetting your door access card in the room.

Breakfast

The breakfast was a pleasant surprise. The hotel had a real continental menu with excellent French baguette, good coffee, good selection of juices, pastries, croissants, cheese, fruit, etc. I believe you can also order a cooked English breakfast (bacon and eggs, pork sausage, beans, tomato), perhaps even a Scottish one with haggis, I can't recall. The breakfast is optional and is pricey at 6 pounds ($11).

Hotel Features

The hotel has a bar/lounge. Other amenities include satellite TV (it is pricey and I haven't used it) - regular TV channels are still available for free. The rooms have air conditioning and telephones.

The hotel staff was friendly and pretty efficient. On the way out, they give you an access code for you to be able to open the gate to drive out of the parking lot. The code they gave me didn't work on one of two gates, but worked on another one.

The check-out time is noon and check-in is 2pm. The noon checkout time is generous - elsewhere in Scotland we had to check out earlier - between 10 and 11am.

On the way out, after 9 am we didn't encounter any heavy traffic on the way to motorway M8 to Edinburgh, even despite rain.

Pros: Reasonably priced, close to center of Glasgow, modern rooms, elevators, breakfast
Cons: Location not ideal, breakfast was not included in price.

Bottom Line

Overall, I recommend this hotel if you have to go to Glasgow and don't want to spend much on hotel accommodations. And consider their breakfast. Although not inexpensive, it is quite good.