Premier Inn

The one thing that really messed up my stay was when we were checking out, I realized I left a box of cake in my hotel room. So I went up to get it, only to find that it had been eaten by the cleaning lady. It would have been alright if she told me, but she kept insisting that she didn’t eat it, and that she found the empty cake box and had thrown it away. I don’t believe that anyone could’ve gotten into my room and eaten my cake during the 6 minutes it took me to get upstairs.
So yes, their cleaning ladies are extremely responsive, but incredibly dishonest. First and last time here.

Very good quality for the money. Nice spacious rooms for a London hotel. Clean, desk to work, place to hang your suit. Nothing to complain about. Although, a bottle of water in the room would be nice. A well can’t have everything.

Great location close to public transportation, good pubs, and British Museum. Clean, comfortable rooms. Staff has good customer service skills. Price was perfect.

The hospitality of the staff was fantastic. The rooms were very clean and the whole hotel is very «green.» Perhaps the most «green» hotel we’ve stayed in anywhere. The in house restaurant was very good and the location of the hotel provided good access to anywhere we wanted to go in London.

I’ve read all the 5 star reviews, and appreciate that my review may stand out. But I feel after a huge number of stays my review will truly reflect this hotel.
I am a huge fan of the Premier Inn brand, I stay in premier inn hotels all over the country every week for minimum of 3 nights each time but it has its very obvious ups and downs:
Goods:
— Good Night Guarantee
— Beds are very comfortable
— Rooms are clean and very well maintained
— Staff are extremely friendly and well trained one of the reasons I always come back. The operations manager has always made a point of coming over to me asking how I am and shaking my hand when he see’s me which is appreciated.
— Checkin process is seemless, beats competitors.
— Food is nice, not perfect but its what I would expect for this standard of hotel.
Bads:
— Good Night Guarantee — Premier Inn don’t like it if you claim, if you claim more than 3 times or more you’ll get a 8am call from a GM/​Ops Manager asking if the brand is really for you. Out of over 150 nights i’ve only claimed a few times (1 x Bad Smell — couldn’t move rooms as they were full, 1x Air con making loud noises all night 2 x Loud Noise from Parties of people and 6am kids running up and down the corridor) but the guarantee is supposed to be «no quibbles» but yet you get an interrogation, putting you off from complaining or claiming the guarantee in the future — which has done for a few of my nights recently as I dont want them to tell me to leave and not book through them again.
— The hotel is promoted as Budget Hotel, but costs a lot more than a lot of competitors with the same standards. They’ve even won awards for being a Budget Hotel but doesn’t sit right for me considering the price.
— You cant negotiate a rate with Premier Inn without a lot of hard pushing, I had the promise of a solid 4 month booking which could extend to 8 months and even then it was a struggle to get a rate (which still isn’t that great), the ops manager approached me and has reneged on this deal starting from the new year saying he wouldn’t honour it any further and the staff member who gave it to me has been «spoken to» and shouldnt have given it to me, and this member of staff is is now on «maternity leave». Competitors of Premier Inn are very welcoming to negotiating long term rates.
— Phones are in the Premier Inn rooms, but if you try to call the bar/​restaurant to pre order for takeaway food generally this is impossible and they make you come down to the bar and then wait the 15−30mins to cook the food.
— They don’t offer room service.
— Premier Inn doesn’t have a Loyalty Program.
Deals
Generally the deals Premier Inn mail out via Email are for outside of London generally and aren’t targeted.
They have a promotion on at the moment that if you stay 3 stays or more you are entitled to a free stay, but they sneakily hide in the Terms and Conditions that you pre existing bookings don’t count and lots of other dodgy type exclusions. It feels very tricky.
Conclusion:
Premier Inn is a great hotel brand, if you are going to stay 1 – 3 nights, but if you decide to stay regularly you really do start to see all the cracks show.
For now it still beats Holiday Inn Express, but with all the upgrades Holiday Inn Express are undertaking i’m not sure how long Premier Inn will stand out.
Other competitor hotels are just as good but the good night guarantee stands out for Premier Inn.