Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, is growing at a phenomenal rate. You can pop into a café for a quick coffee and by the time you come out the whole skyline around you can appear to have changed so fast are the high rises emerging like termite mounds from the earth. I’m not really sure what most of these buildings are going to be, but decent value hotels certainly don’t seem to have been high on the list of city planners requirements.

Yes, that’s right, Addis doesn’t contain much in the way of well-priced and comfortable hotels. The new, and strangely named, Blue Bird Hotel is bucking that trend though. True, it’s not the most exciting and imaginative of hotels and has modeled its style purely on function and business ease, but this is certainly no bad thing and for most people in Addis, either tourists pausing on a longer tour of the Ethiopian countryside or businessmen looking to add to the mystery tower blocks, function and form are the key requirements.

Where this hotel stands out from the pack is in the very warm and helpful welcome and service. Staff spent hours, and even came in from their day off, to go through mountains of laundry looking for a lost item of mine that turned out to be in my pocket (sorry about that…). The breakfast spread and rooftop restaurant is also memorable and the Wi-Fi signal was unusually strong for Addis. But best of all is the price. Unlike most hotels in Addis, the managers of the Blue Bird have resisted the urge to raise prices far above the value of the overall package they offer and the result is a solidly, good value place to stay. In fact, are only real niggles are that some of the street-facing rooms can be a little noisy, and that it’s a little distant from the city centre and the main tourist sites (although the main restaurant and nightlife area of Addis is much closer).