Nothing can make or break a long-distance journey like a service station. It’s the one place out on the road where most people go to refuel, recharge, and resupply snacks and beverages to aid you in getting to your destination.
New research by Hippo Leasing has analysed 12,738 reviews from 110 of the UK’s official service stations to reveal which are deemed the cleanest by visitors, based on how many times keywords relating to cleanliness are mentioned within the individual reviews.
- Lymm Motorway Services ranked as the cleanest in the country
Hippo Leasing’s data shows that the Motorway Services in Lymm ranked as the cleanest and tidiest service station in the UK. Lymm Services, found on the M6 near Manchester, had 243% of reviews containing cleanliness-based keywords, meaning most of their reviews received two or more positive mentions of the service station being “clean”, “neat”, “pleasant” and “tidy” etc.
Reviews for Lymm say it’s “Refreshingly better than a normal services”, and that it is “clean and tidy” with customers feeling like they were “well looked after”.
- Rugby MOTO revealed as the second cleanest in the UK
Another M6 service station, Rugby MOTO, also has a high percentage of 233%. Rugby was “Very clean and well organised” according to one visitor, with another noting how “Clean and Modern” it was. In fact, out of 15 reviews, 11 of them mentioned the word “clean”.
- Oxford’s Welcome Break takes third
Oxford’s Welcome Break service station rounded out the top three. It was the last of the 200+% club with 206% of reviews mentioning positive keywords, with drivers visiting the M40 station mentioning that the service station was “Pleasant and clean” and “Clean and tidy”, with one visitor going as far as to say it was “Attractive” and that it had a “nice ambiance”.
- Tamworth Motorway Services named as fourth cleanest service station
In fourth place is Tamworth Motorway Services which is on the M42. All of the reviews for Tamworth mentioned that it was either clean or nice, with one reviewer saying “The facilities were also very clean as well. Will use these again when on this route.”.
- The UK’s fifth cleanest service station is Leeds Skelton Lake Services Extra
Rounding off the top five cleanest service stations in the UK according to reviews is Leeds Skelton Lake Services Extra. This service station is based on the M1 at J45 and one reviewer went as far as to declare it as “Without doubt one of the best services in the country.” and went on to say that it was “Clean and airy”.
Methodology: Hippo Leasing analysed 12,738 online reviews written about the 110 official motorway service stations listed on the MotorwayServices website. Filtering for 46 keywords relating to cleanliness, dirtiness, cheapness, and expensiveness, to find all the service station reviews where those terms were mentioned.
Hippo Leasing then ranked the service stations by the number of mentions, divided by the number of reviews, which then gave a percentage of times certain keywords were used within the reviews to rank the service stations in order of most reviews mentioning the keywords.
