Park Plaza Hotels (Radisson) offering £99 London / €89 Amsterdam REFUNDABLE sale deals

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• James says:

  4 Jun4 June 12:32

  Well, currently British travellers are not welcome in the Netherlands so you’d want it to be refundable! It’s unsurprising our neighbours don’t want us given how badly our government has cocked this up. More deaths than the entire EU27 yesterday. Appalling incompetence.

  • Doug says:

    4 Jun4 June 12:56

    A little harsh, deaths today being higher is a reflection of our relative position on the epidemic curve (their epidemic was earlier), deaths per capita is similar to other European countries and largely dependent on reporting techniques (confirmed vs suspected vs out of hospital numbers vs died “with”). Though I wouldn’t disagree that leadership has been a mess the last couple of weeks.

    • BJ says:

      4 Jun4 June 14:20

      It’s a reflection of the governments attitude and response. The stakes were higher in the likes of Austria and Germany and contrast what they achieved despite having less time on their hands compared to us. The UK has the highest death rate in the world, our government is both an embarrassment and grossly incompetent and the saddest part of all is that the electorate will let them off the hook for it.

      • CV3V says:

        5 Jun5 June 08:51

        +1

        As long as the (UK) government keeps describing its approach as a success and its track and trace as ‘world beating’ (ahem!), then a large chunk of people will believe it and not scrutinise them. The next general election is a long way off and people seem to have short memories.

  • Anna says:

    4 Jun4 June 12:56

    It’s been handled very badly from the start, I agree, but figures aren’t everything. In Spain, for example, 17000 excess deaths have been identified as having been left out of the COVID mortality statistics, so I don’t think we have a clear picture of what’s been happening anywhere really.

    • J says:

      4 Jun4 June 13:01

      There is a very clear picture – the UK has had the most excess deaths.

      https://www.ft.com/content/6b4c784e-c259-4ca4-9a82-648ffde71bf0

      • Anna says:

        4 Jun4 June 13:02

        Only in absolute terms, not per million. Read the article!

        • J says:

          4 Jun4 June 13:08

          In absolute terms and rate the UK is very near the top as you’d know if you read it. What a terrible state of affairs. You’d have to be desperate to want visitors from the UK right now.

        • Anna says:

          4 Jun4 June 13:14

          I did read it, which is how I know that your comment was misleading. Absolute numbers are pretty meaningless as countries have differing population numbers. And saying you’d have to be desperate to want visitors from the UK is also meaningless as UK visitors who had tested negative wouldn’t pose any more risk than visitors from anywhere else. You’re making vague and sweeping statements which don’t stand up to scrutiny.

        • Crafty says:

          4 Jun4 June 14:08

          Anna, no they aren’t meaningless. Epidemics tend to spread from person to person, rather than universally across a given geographic area. Therefore, absolute numbers are generally considered the best way to track the containment or otherwise of the spread.

          Deaths per capita are an interesting metric after the event, but do not as effectively measure the quality of containment effort.

        • Rhys says:

          4 Jun4 June 15:25

          As with all statistics I imagine it depends on what question you are asking.

        • J says:

          4 Jun4 June 14:16

          Anna I appreciate you want to go on holiday but a lot of countries simply won’t want UK visitors for a long time. And now the UK govt has been exposed for relaxing the restrictions – not based on science, but to distract political attention from an advisor who broke the law. What confidence does that give other countries in how the UK is managing this? Of course as I earlier mentioned some countries are desperate and might take a risk, but a lot won’t and so I expect restrictions for a long time yet.

        • BJ says:

          4 Jun4 June 14:40

          Whatever way we look at it, UK is amongst the worst, if not the worst. Nothing in that to take pride, pleasure, comfort, hope, optimism or whatever from. Particularly given the scale of the outbreak was avoidable. When it comes to travel, other countries don’t care if Anna, J or me test negative a few days before entering their country, they care about Covid-19 incidence in the UK and how reliable estimates of it are.

        • Lady London says:

          4 Jun4 June 15:10

          Regardless of the truth and comparability of the figures the UK had a massive advantage over Europe that we are an island and could have sealed borders early on. We blew it.

        • Bazza says:

          4 Jun4 June 18:38

          Come on must know J by now. Talks politics in here everyday but does not think anyone else should – when his losing the argument, as per usual!
          Remainers just can’t let it go. This is their extremely childish way of having a dig at boris and the UK as a whole for voting leave… Very childish.

        • Dave says:

          4 Jun4 June 20:06

          Hmm. Or maybe its the leavers who just can’t let it go out of fear of admitting the bunch of incompetent, arrogant, liars they voted for in Brexit are just that, and if they did so it risks showing them up for the pile of BS they voted for.
          From the outside, it just looks so blinkered, and people like Bazza can’t see whats blatantly staring them in the face. Very childish indeed.

        • J says:

          4 Jun4 June 22:46

          Put another way, the UK internationally is seen as having handled this very badly. Of course Bazza you can think the rest of Europe (Germany and so on with a fraction of the deaths) are wrong about this like they’re wrong about Brexit. But that’s the view abroad so for a lot of destinations expect stricter requirements visiting from the UK, than if you were visiting from most other European countries.

      • DV says:

        4 Jun4 June 14:18

        From the FT: “Common sense is absent from the death toll debate”

        At last, our opinion leaders have begun to quote death rates (per 100,000) as opposed to simple death totals….

        This is a much-needed improvement… other factors are likely to affect the number of people dying in a given country… how physically close people live to each other — and how crowded their public transport systems are — must also have an effect on the rate of transmission, and hence on deaths.

        Take a basket of seven European countries and the US. In basic “per 100,000” terms, Belgium fares worst (1) and Germany best (8), with the UK firmly holding the centre ground (4). Adjust this ranking for population density and some aspects change dramatically. The US, previously ranked 7, shoots to the naughty step (1); Belgium sinks to a modest 5, and the UK also drops — from 4 to 6. Germany, however, is best performer on both measures, always at 8.

        This adjusted ranking is not “true”. It is not, in itself, of any direct scientific use; but common sense suggests that it may well be closer to an unknowable “truth” than unadjusted figures. There are a host of other factors which undoubtedly have an effect on death rates: age profile, poverty levels, rate of Bame citizens, Vitamin D levels in relation to geographical latitude, obesity — and perhaps a dozen or so more. The full equation would be hugely complex, and vulnerable to wide margins of error.

        As a returning GP working on the NHS 111 Covid-19 Clinical Assessment Service, I call on the journalists and others who use such data to attack our leaders to demonstrate a better understanding of what is going on: there is nothing in such data to justify the question, “Why have we done so badly?” The only useful question that arises from this exercise is perhaps, “Why has Germany [so far] done so well?”

      • Alan says:

        4 Jun4 June 23:57

        I thought Sweden was ahead of us? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/architect-of-sweden-coronavirus-strategy-admits-too-many-died-anders-tegnell

        Shows how ineffective our late lockdown was.

    • Chris Heyes says:

      4 Jun4 June 14:12

      Anna@ One statistic everyone forgets to mention we are a “island”
      We should have the least death rates of all the 27 country’s
      In fact we should have had the lowest deaths & infections in the World
      Apart from smaller Islands than here
      (you enjoying your retirement lol)

      • Josh says:

        4 Jun4 June 14:29

        Cough cough Freedom of Movement cough cough

        • J says:

          4 Jun4 June 14:31

          What are you on about? Most EU countries closed their borders and restricted movement. The UK did not.

        • Chris Heyes says:

          4 Jun4 June 14:32

          Josh@ Stop freedom of movement only one cough Singapore comes to mind lol

        • Lady London says:

          4 Jun4 June 15:13

          🙂

      • TGLoyalty says:

        4 Jun4 June 22:11

        Just so I’m clear when exactly was the UK meant to close all borders to everyone?

        January when it broke in Wuhan (french doctors have a confirmed case in Dec)
        Start of March when it spread around northern Italy?
        Perhaps on March 27th when there were already around 2m active cases in the UK

        This new quarantine is an absolute farce not borne out of any sense of reality of the situation.

  • meta says:

    4 Jun4 June 14:34

    There is no ban for UK citizens.

    • ChrisC says:

      5 Jun5 June 14:03

      Yes there is.

      https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2020/06/tourists-from-uk-sweden-not-welcome-in-nl-as-lock-down-eases-further/

      “Visitors from the UK and Sweden will not be welcome in the Netherlands when tourism starts up again on June 15, prime minister Mark Rutte told reporters on Wednesday evening.”

      “‘The message is, we do not want British people and Swedes here at the moment,’ he said. ‘If they do come, they will have to go into quarantine for two weeks.’”

  • Lady London says:

    4 Jun4 June 15:05

    Do you think we’ve really done that badly? Could it just be that the UK government is being more honest in reporting than other countries?

    • J says:

      4 Jun4 June 15:14

      This government – honest? 😂 The Cummings debacle – trying to justify breaking the law by going on a long round trip to “test his eyesight” shows their complete lack of integrity. Meanwhile hiding behind “the science” when they’re clearly ignoring it. I have no trust in anything they say.

    • The Lord says:

      4 Jun4 June 15:19

      and the way the numbers are reported. Read somewhere debunking the ‘UK had more deaths than the EU27’ that if the UK had reported the numbers in the same way that Spain does that UK would have had 20 deaths, not the 300+ reported.

  • ChrisBCN says:

    4 Jun4 June 15:44

    Wow, didn’t take long for this article on a hotel price to turn into exactly the same bun fight over government bad/good, deaths worse/not worse than others etc etc that we get in the daily bits article and many others…. Will you people stop when you are allowed back into the pub? 😂

    • J says:

      4 Jun4 June 15:53

      It’s rather unavoidable since there’ll be travel restrictions for the foreseeable future because of the situation in the UK.

      • ChrisBCN says:

        4 Jun4 June 17:49

        But the same people saying the same things day in day out? It seems as well that people don’t even listen to what others say.

        • BJ says:

          4 Jun4 June 18:44

          Yes ok, I totally agree. Let’s ignore the death rate for a few days and start discussing the increase in hospital admission in England since the lockdown was eased.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          4 Jun4 June 22:13

          @BJ there will be an increase in hospital admissions but the main thing is are they a manageable number of admissions

    • Bazza says:

      5 Jun5 June 07:57

      It’s just remainers trying to get their own back on boris and Co. Nothing more

      • J says:

        5 Jun5 June 08:13

        Yeah and foreign countries will impose stricter travel restrictions on the UK just out of spite, nothing to do with the huge number of cases in the UK and its poor handling of the virus. It’s all the EU’s fault!

  • Andrew says:

    4 Jun4 June 23:11

    When you say “our government”, which are your referring to?

    Hollywood, Cardiff or Westminster?

    There’s a rather nasty “Little Englander” element developing who seem to be in utter denial that Health, Education, Transport and other areas are fully devolved to Scotland and Wales.

    If you’re going to attack the Tories then use the England rather than UK stats. Likewise attack the SNP over Nike/Hilton deaths cover-up then use the Scotland figures. Or if it’s Labour protesting with the unions about the Westminster sending 2 year groups back to school when Labour themselves are sending all children in Wales back in 3 weeks, quote the Welsh figures.

    Essentially, anyone who is using UK figures but referring to a single Government or just Boris isn’t a reliable source.

    • J says:

      5 Jun5 June 09:50

      Keeping the borders open and planes flying in from high risk countries with no restrictions is entirely down to the UK govt, nothing at all to do with the devolved govts… And UK was very unique in this and being so lax.

  • Rothermere says:

    5 Jun5 June 07:36

    +1

• ChrisC says:

  4 Jun4 June 12:45

  Great deal and the fact it’s cancellable makes it even better given the ‘current situation’

  i’ve stayed at the Amsterdam hotel before. Good location opposite Centraal Station and at the top of the Damrak

• Crafty says:

  4 Jun4 June 14:04

  Where does it say refundable 48 hours before? When I try and make a booking it’s telling me 30 days before.

  • Crafty says:

    4 Jun4 June 14:05

    Sorry. No it isn’t. I’m being stupid.

• Mark says:

  4 Jun4 June 14:05

  Booked a London one. Moved from Waterloo last year so will be nice to go back and eat at our favourite places. If it’s all open.

• Sam says:

  4 Jun4 June 14:09

  Just read your review about Park Plaza Westminster and I’ve decided to give it a miss. The dishonesty of the front desk staff and the treatment you received was a big turn off that keeps me away from here. If it was at a Hilton I would have got a full night worth of points comped. £100 is not as attractive considering it’s normal rate is around £100-180. Plus I don’t think I can see the London eye view from this Park Plaza but only the one near City Hall?

  • Kai says:

    4 Jun4 June 14:38

    They sell rooms called “Studio room with London Eye view”

• memesweeper says:

  4 Jun4 June 14:39

  Best rates for London in the next few weeks already gone…

• Peter says:

  4 Jun4 June 15:13

  I recommend against booking the one in London based on my experience with their staff.

• Hunter says:

  4 Jun4 June 17:29

  I gather that a gold benefit is a room upgrade, if available (perhaps likely as occupancy will probably be low) – so for London that seems to be a 1 bedroom suite, assuming I’ve paid the extra £10 for a studio room..?
  Just that it makes quite a big difference, as the kids would then fit in too!

  • Matt says:

    4 Jun4 June 19:26

    The upgrade would be to London Eye view assuming you’d booked the standard studio room.

  • Relaxo says:

    5 Jun5 June 06:43

    I’ve never got any upgrade at radisson London properties in my 5 yrs of being Gold.

    • J says:

      5 Jun5 June 07:35

      Same never had much luck with upgrades at Radissons in UK as Gold except Stansted.

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