InterContinental O2 scraps its £30 pool fee following our coverage

Earlier this week we told you how InterContinental London The O2 was intending to make customers ‘splash the cash’ by adding a huge fee to use its swimming pool.

As I said at the time, I have a soft spot for InterContinental London The O2. It is a good quality hotel which can be excellent value on certain dates.

I took my family there for a weekend break once when it was £100 per night, even though we live across town, because it has a good pool and we thought we’d show the kids a bit of east London.

It was unlikely that I would be heading back in a hurry, however, after we exclusively reported that InterContinental London The O2 had added a swimming pool charge.

It would cost £90 for a family of four to have a dip for an hour. You literally just get a one hour slot for that price.

The actual pricing was £30 for adults and £15 for children under 18, per one hour slot.

InterContinental has now rolled back the charge

We managed to place our article in the Daily Mail (see here, there are 290 comments) and Independent (see here) which led to additional coverage.

Last night, the General Manager of the hotel dropped me a note to say:

“The hotel has reversed the decision to charge the in-house guest for the pool”

….. which is good news, although as of last night the hotel website had not changed. I hope, medium term, the hotel realises that reversing the charge is actually a positive move for bookings.

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