If you have to go to Birmingham on business or fancy an inexpensive weekend break, nitenite is the ideal hotel.

Situated opposite a multi-storey car park near a dual carriageway and a forest of high rises, nitenite is bang in the centre of town, five minutes from New Street Station. First impressions are good. The staff are smiley and helpful. The reception is deceptively spacious, clad in dark wood, with giant Anglepoise lamps and leather sofas. A startling white, but pleasant looking, breakfast room with a small deli-café is just to one side.

So nothing prepares me for what’s to come.

Up the stairs to my room the corridor appears a trifle narrow. Then, after opening the bedroom door, I almost fall on to the bed. Two more paces and I’m facing the end wall. The bed fills half the space of the room, which is padded on three sides, no doubt to protect the manic claustrophobic.

I suddenly realise something rather obvious — so obvious that, at first, I’d almost overlooked it. There are no windows. Where are they? The bathroom is pleasant with enough space for bits and bobs; the own-brand toiletries don’t smell cheap. But the bathroom door won’t stay shut and that is a problem because the air-con filter is incredibly noisy (no doubt due to sucking, filtering and refining the industrial Brummie atmosphere, I can’t help thinking).

The room is more like a “pod” than a normal hotel room, something like an inside cabin on a cruise ship — and it looks as if it’s been Meccanoed into place with 104 other rooms to form this hotel. In terms of colour it is a cockpit of calm beige, fawn and balti-brown.

Nitenite, which opened in March, is the brainchild of Neil Tibbatts, the designer- architect behind many of Brum’s funkiest bars. He decided to create his own place because he was tired of arriving at midnight when travelling on business, leaving at 6am and being charged £200 for unimaginative rooms.

The problem is that the squeezed size initially makes me feel as if I’ve been taken hostage and locked away. But this feeling did pass and I soon adapted to the quiet and padded nature of the place.

Once I did, I turned on the 42in plasma screen, which lords it over the room. What is the first channel to come on? A CCTV picture of Birmingham. In the rain. On second thoughts, who needs windows after all? Kieran Falconer

Bottom line: Kieran Falconer paid £49.95 B&B.

Sampling the fare: Breakfast was croissants and bottled orange juice in the small “Saint Beni” café, which serves cheap salads and sandwiches.

What we think: Good value, particularly the online £39.95 rate.

Worst thing: No windows.

Best thing: The prices.

Need to know: nitenite (0845 8909099, www.nitenite.com), 18 Holliday Street, Birmingham B1.

Access all areas: Five disabled rooms that are twice the size of the normal rooms. Still no windows, though.

Room: 5 out of 10.

Food: 3 out of 10.

Service: 7 out of 10.

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BACKGROUND

• Malmaison Birmingham

• Simpsons, Edgbaston, Birmingham

• Nitenite, Holliday Street, Birmingham

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