Fun Online Polls: Budget hotels & planning regulations

The results to last week's Fun Online Polls were as follows:

UK budget and mid-priced hotel chains. Thumbs up, thumbs down, what? Multiple selections allowed.

Premier Inn 20 votes
Travelodge 11 votes
Ibis 7 votes
easyHotel 0 votes
Holiday Inn 5 votes
Mercure 3 votes
Novotel 2 votes
easyHotel 0 votes
Thistle 1 vote
Other, please specify 2 votes

'Others' suggested were Days Inn (have smoking rooms!), Comfort Inn and Big Sleep.

Premier Inn got the most reasonably favourable comments, so that appears to be the winner - but perhaps that is because there are more of them, so people are more likely to have stayed in one?
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There appears to be some misunderstanding or disagreement as to planning regulations.

In my experience, local councils restrict the amount of buildings which developers can build on any plot; others (NIMBYs, Faux Libertarians and Homeys generally) appear to think that local councils encourage developers to build more than they really wanted to or more than what is appropriate.

It is possible that both are true: suburban and rural councils try and keep densities as low as possible (even when higher densities would make sense) and turn down more planning applications, and that urban councils ask developers to build as much as possible (more smaller units) and nod everything through.

(I'm not talking about the indirect effect on densities or home sizes of high land prices and taxation of profits rather than land values, I mean in terms of how much building a developer can put on a plot.)

So what's your experience/impression?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.