On this page (5 sections)
Where it actually is
Terminal Road sounds promising; it is the far side of the airfield, a two-mile drive from the doors.
The hotel sits on Terminal Road, sat-nav postcode B26 3RF, off the A45 Coventry Road south of the runway. As the crow flies the terminal is close; by anything without wings it is two miles round the perimeter, which is the number the hotel's own page leads with. Do not plan to walk it: the route runs along busy roads and takes the best part of 40 minutes with luggage. Driving in, leave the M42 at junction 6, follow the A45 towards Birmingham for 1.7 miles and turn right at the lights onto Terminal Road.
What the location does serve well is the wider corner of Solihull: the NEC is about a six-minute drive, Birmingham International station a little further, and the A45 puts the city and the motorway network on the doorstep. Think of it as a budget roadside hotel that happens to neighbour an airport, rather than an airport hotel in the Novotel sense, and its price starts to make sense.
Getting to the terminal
A taxi is the default, the bus is the budget route, and Car Park 7's transfer serves its own customers.
There is no shuttle. The hotel's own page offers a taxi service to the airport and the NEC, and reviewers consistently report paying £10 to £15 for the five-minute hop at dawn; book it the night before rather than hoping at 04:30. The budget alternative is the bus: West Midlands services run from the end of Terminal Road, travellers report the X1 among them, and the bus guide covers routes and fares to the airport. If someone is driving you round instead, the terminal's drop-off rules apply as normal.
The one part-exception is Car Park 7, directly opposite the hotel, whose transfer bus runs to the terminal for its pre-booked customers; if you are parking there anyway, that bus is your ride. Arriving passengers heading to the hotel should just take a taxi from the rank; after a flight, nobody wants to reverse-engineer a bus route for the sake of £10.
Rooms, breakfast and the Bar Café
Standard Travelodge kit done properly: king beds, SuperRooms with a coffee machine, and a 24/7 front desk.
Rooms are the current Travelodge range: Standard doubles with king-size beds, twins, family rooms and accessible rooms, plus SuperRooms that add comforts like a Lavazza capsule coffee machine for a few pounds more. Premium wifi by Virgin Media is included, which is not a given at this price. Check-in opens at 15:00 and check-out runs to 12:00, both flexible for a charge, and the desk is staffed around the clock, so a 03:30 departure or a midnight arrival is routine here.
The Bar Café covers eating without leaving: an unlimited breakfast from 07:00 on weekdays (to 10:00, and 07:00 to 12:00 at weekends), dinner from 17:00 to 22:00, and a bar in between, with snacks and soft drinks at reception at any hour. The timing is the one catch: 07:00 is after the first departure bank leaves, so on the earliest flights breakfast happens airside, not here. That is normal for the budget tier; only the Novotel across the airfield feeds people from 04:00.
Parking: the Car Park 7 arrangement
No parking at the hotel itself: the NCP-run Car Park 7 opposite takes cars for up to 72 hours.
The hotel has no on-site parking. Its designated arrangement is Car Park 7, the NCP-run airport car park directly opposite: pre-book it up to 48 hours before arrival through the link in your booking confirmation email, or pay the tariff, which runs £24.50 for 24 hours with a hard maximum of 72 hours. Two rules catch people out: once you have paid, leaving and returning means paying again, and the little car park behind the hotel gives 15 free minutes only, for unloading, not overnight.
The 72-hour cap is the important number, because it rules out the classic leave-the-car-and-fly week. If that is your plan, this is the wrong product: a hotel and parking package or a long-stay car park booked on its own does it properly, and the park, sleep and fly guide explains how the bundled version runs. Note too that the airport sells Car Park 7 to flyers as a seasonal, pre-booked product, so treat the arrangement as something to confirm at booking rather than assume on the day.
Is it worth it
Add the taxi both ways before calling it the cheapest bed; sometimes it still is, and sometimes the walkable ibis budget wins.
Price the journey, not the room. A quiet-night rate here starts under £30, seen as low as £28.99 when this page was researched on the hotel's own page, but a flight adds a taxi each way that reviewers put at £10 to £15 a time. Once that is counted, the total often lands beside the ibis budget, which costs a little more and stands a few minutes' walk from check-in. Without a car, or on a first-wave departure, the walkable option nearly always wins.
The Travelodge earns its keep in the cases the walk does not decide: you are driving and staying no more than three nights, so Car Park 7 opposite covers the car; you are here for the NEC or Solihull on a budget and the airport is incidental; or every walkable bed has been swallowed by an event and this side of the airfield still has a £30 room. It is a clean, well-run budget box with a 24-hour desk; it is just not next to the terminal, whatever the name says. The hotels comparison lays out the whole field if you are still deciding.