As you will all be aware by now, owing to the incredible popularity of Auto Assembly this year combined with bookings being made by people attending other events in and around the NEC complex, accommodation at our convention hotel, The Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel have virtually sold out. We appreciate that this has proved to be frustrating for those of you who have not yet booked your hotel rooms for Auto Assembly 2014 or who have not yet booked your tickets for the event and were waiting to book pending making accommodation plans so we wanted to make sure that we were able to do everything possible to ensure that everyone attending the convention iss able to find somewhere to stay for the convention weekend.
Our entire convention committee has been working towards finding options for all of you with Billy Edwards, our hotel liaison, taking a lead on this. It’s extremely important to us here at Auto Assembly to make sure that all of you are able to find affordable hotel rooms as close as possible to the Hilton while still being able to get to your hotels quickly and easily without any inconvenience without any of it impacting on your Auto Assembly experience so we’ve scoured the Birmingham area to try to find the best hotels, the best hotel deals we can and to check availability on all the options available as well as providing all of you with as much information as we can about your stay over the convention weekend.
Room Sharing
We do know that some of you are doing this year is attending Auto Assembly on your own. If you’re attending the convention for the first time, this can be a bit daunting and we’ve found that a great way to break the ice can be through room sharing. It’s a way to make a new friend straight away and settle down into the Transformers frenzy that you’ll experience over the weekend. For those of you who are already Auto Assembly veterans, sharing a room with another attendee can be a great way to split costs on your hotel bill giving you extra money in your pocket for all those convention essentials… TOYS!
Finding a roommate couldn’t be easier as well as we’ve set up a dedicated Auto Assembly Roommate Finder area on the Auto Assembly Forum so just pop over there if you’re looking to share your existing room or looking to find someone to double-up with!
Alternative Accommodation
For those of you who want to look further afield, there are plenty of sites out there that can help you with making plans to get great deals on hotel accommodation in and around the Birmingham area. Birmingham is England’s second city and has and incredible range of hotels, guest houses and bed & breakfast accommodation to suit all budgets and requirements and we certainly don’t have the space to list all of them here!
What we would suggest is that – rather than searching for these individually online and booking directly with any of these – we would advise using a hotel comparison website such as www.trivago.co.uk, www.hotels.com or www.expedia.co.uk to get the best possible rates. We have found that the best deals can be found in Birmingham City Centre itself which is a short 7-10 minute train ride from the NEC complex where the Hilton is situated and depending on your needs, the best prices you will find can be obtained for rooms without breakfast or if you are willing to pay for your rooms in advance. One thing we have found on doing test bookings ourselves is that the best deals are to be found using Trivago which searches and compares prices across more websites than the others and tends to return more options for travellers.
One thing that we did find from our searches is that there are a vast number of rooms available in and around the central Birmingham area right now at the time of Auto Assembly. There are more than enough hotel rooms just in the vicinity of the city centre alone to accommodate every attendee for this year’s convention even if we were to have a total ticket sell-out at the event so please don’t worry about not being able to find a room.
In addition to these websites, more hotels and information is available from Birmingham’s Tourist Information Centre at www.visitbirmingham.com or call them on (0121) 202 5115 or from outside of the UK call +44 121 202 5115.
For those of you travelling with a group and are happy to share taxis between the Hilton and your hotel this can reduce your costs further but we have set up a separate page here on the website covering Auto Assembly 2014 Transport Information.
Hotels Near The Hilton
We do appreciate that most of you will want to stay as close as possible to the Hilton during the course of Auto Assembly so we’ve been working hard to find out what rooms are available at all of the hotels near the Hilton on or around the NEC complex and at Birmingham International Airport. The main hotels near to the Hilton are:-
- Arden Hotel and Leisure Club – located at the side of the NEC complex, this is a three-star hotel. 0.7 miles from the NEC complex itself. This hotel is currently sold out but may be subject to late cancellations.
- Crowne Plaza – this is the closest to the Hilton, and is a four star hotel.
- Etap – located on the Birmingham International Airport site, this is a low budget hotel with basic accommodation. 0.7 miles from the NEC. The Etap hotels are soon to be rebranded as Ibis Budget but we don’t believe that this will be happening prior to the convention.
- Ibis Hotel – located at Birmingham International Airport, this is a two-star hotel. 0.7 miles from the NEC complex itself
- Novotel – located at Birmingham International Airport, this is a four-star hotel. 0.7 miles from the NEC complex itself
- Premier Inn Birmingham NEC / Airport – actually in the NEC grounds despite it’s name, this is a two star hotel, 0.5 miles from the NEC complex
- Ramada Encore – on the NEC site, a three-star hotel approximately 0.5 miles from the main NEC complex.
- Travelodge BIrmingham Airport – located at Birmingham International Airport. We don’t have exact details on the star rating for this hotel at present.
- Holiday Inn Birmingham Airport – again on the Birmingham International Airport site, this is a three-star hotel approximately 06. miles from the main NEC complex.
More Help
If you need more help planning your trip or in looking for accommodation, please don’t hesitate to contact us at roombookings@autoassembly.org.uk and our team will be on standby to help with any questions you might have or to offer advice.
Getting To The Hilton
Hotels located on Birmingham International Airport’s site can be reached from the Hilton using the connecting monorail to Birmingham International rail station then walking through the NEC complex although this can close for access late at night. For those of you staying in Birmingham City Centre, trains run directly from Birmingham New Street Station again to Birmingham International and run every 7-10 minutes throughout the day. A taxi to the Hilton from Birmingham takes about 15-20 minutes and usually costs around £15-£20 for a single trip.
A video giving directions is on our Youtube channel although please note that the early part of the video giving details regarding Birmingham New Street Station is out of date following the station’s renovation. The information regarding the train journey itself and the trip from Birmingham International rail station is unchanged.
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