Premier Inn (Paddington Basin) — Hotel in London

I don't generally write reviews and I'm usually happy to overlook small things, so our overnight stay at Premier Inn Paddington Basin would have been unremarkable and not worth the time of reviewing. However, I'M SO THOROUGHLY DISAPPOINTED BY THE CUSTOMER SERVICE provided by the brand that all of the little things have added up to where I feel I have to share. Is the hotel clean, affordable, and in a very convenient location for getting to/from Heathrow - YES! Everything else - not so good. The week before our stay, I received a confirmation email with the wrong dates. I tried and tried to reach the hotel to no avail and finally messaged the corporate Facebook page, as it was the only avenue of contact that I could find. After a couple of days, they responded that the dates that I booked were correct with no explanation of why the email was wrong. When we got to the hotel, we tried using the kiosk to check in, but it wouldn't accept our US postcode, so we needed to check in with staff, who were busy talking to each instead of greeting guests. Check in was easy enough and the room pleasant - modern and clean. The shower was nice until I found too late that the provided products were - just different scented body washes. IDK, maybe I expect too much, but not even a shampoo? This would be be one of those things that I'd easily move on from - oh well, no big deal. We had dinner at the on-site restaurant, which looks nice and new, but the food was blah. In the morning, there was a long line for breakfast, so we decided to skip it. Again - things that we could look past. We checked out around 8:30am. There was a crowd of guests around the desk and to be honest, I'm not sure if there was anyone helping, so we just dropped our card in the checkout box. 30 min later, as the Heathrow Express doors closed on our London trip, my son told me that he taken his stuffed animal out of his packed suitcase during the night and asked if I got it from the bed. I hadn't known it was there and shame on me for not shaking out the sheets before we left. I immediately started calling the hotel, again to no avail. So I tried the Facebook Messager for the brand again. It was 2 days before they responded with the hotel telephone # and the email address for the location. After a week of calling and emailing with no answer - actually someone answered once and told me they'd call back in 30 min, which they didn't, I found someone in one of my travel groups that lived locally and was happy to stop in and ask to check lost and found. No stuffy to be found. :-( Again, my fault for not checking the room better before checking out, but honestly you would hope that there would be some decency to try to reunite a child with their loved, handmade stuffed animal. It's not like they didn't know exactly who was staying in the room and all of their contact information. So here we are several weeks later and I just received a very generic "Thank you for your contact" email containing FAQs, but still no actual response to any of the emails or calls that I've made in the time since we've checked out and no way to reply that this doesn't answer the inquiry that was submitted. So now I'm angry venting. I understand this very specific rant could have been prevented if I were more vigilant, but the moral of the story is that Premier Inn will provide you a decent, clean room, BUT DO NOT EXPECT ANY CUSTOMER SERVICE FROM THEM. If nothing else, I hope that brand management sees this and can improve their face to the customer. I understand keeping costs low, but really - no one can answer the phone, no voicemail, no responses to emails, and only sporadic responses on FB? So very...

Myself, my husband, and two children checked into this hotel around 10pm after attending a cricket fixture at nearby Lords. Reception was not busy and we were seen by a staff member straight away. She appeared to be having some difficulty with her computer system and took at least 15 minutes to check us in.

We went up to our room to discover that this was OCCUPIED BY ANOTHER GUEST. This has never happened to us before and we were incredibly shocked to realise that this was possible.

In addition to this, the room type was not even correct for our party, so I am unsure how we were checked into it, even if unoccupied.

We went back downstairs to explain the issue and another staff member took over and re-checked us in which took around 10 minutes, and this time she accompanied us to our room to make sure it was not occupied.

On the way up to our new room this staff member bad-mouthed her colleague, explaining that she had been on holiday and had forgotten almost every aspect of how to do her job and had been making mistakes all day. She said the booking in system was very hard to use and it is very easy to book someone into an occupied room by clicking on the wrong column. We felt very uncomfortable with the level of unprofessionalism shown by this staff member criticising her colleague and the system.

Our second room was not occupied, and it was a family room as booked. We all went to bed, and around 10 minutes later, my 7 year old son's pop up bed's front legs collapsed to leave my son's head against the wall. He was unhurt, just a bit shocked. I fixed the bed easily and quickly by popping the legs back up and making sure front and back legs were locked into position. I did not feel the need to alert the clearly incompetent staff to a problem that I had easily fixed.

I have since complained to Premier Inn guest relations about our stay. I usually love staying in Premier Inns and we find them good hotels. We paid £200 for one night in a family room not including breakfast and I just would not expect this poor level of service.

Unfortunately guest relations only apologised that I did not enjoy my stay due to the late check in and room allocation. They did not address the fact that we were given an occupied room or that their staff were so unprofessional and made us feel uncomfortable. They completely focused on the broken bed and unfortunately because I did not report this at the time they are unable to apologise properly for any aspect of our stay. They have made me aware that hotel staff are happy to help 24 hours of the day and we should have contacted them about the fact that I had to fix our bed. We have been told that if only we had rung down to let staff know our bed had broken and been fixed then they would have been able to refund our stay.

I am incredibly disappointed about being put into a room that was occupied by someone else, and the realisation that this could happen to us one day with another guest being given a key to our bedroom. I am also disappointed that the staff were barely apologetic and instead just bad-mouthed colleagues for making this error. However, I am most disappointed that Premier Inn guest relations are completely unconcerned by guests being checked into occupied rooms and staff making guests feel uncomfortable, and are unable to apologise for this at all just because I did not report a broken and fixed bed in the moment.

Once I have completed my next non-refundable stay at a Premier Inn, I will not be staying at another Premier Inn again. Their booking system is clearly too prone to user error and I would feel unsafe knowing anyone could enter my bedroom and that this would not be taken seriously...

I visited Premier inn 3rd week September. Usually, I take a few time to write a review when experience was less than average not to be biased.

To summarize its maximum a hard 3 star hotel, I’ll give 2.

We selected this branch due to its location convenience.

When we arrived upon check in they asked us for the booking name but I was never asked for my ID, how safe could it be if they don’t have the ID of everyone that checks in?

The restaurant was not working due to emergency, we were notified about 5 days before arriving but what takes that long to fix unless is a sanitary code?

When entering the room it smelled like someone had been smoking weed for a full week, bathroom had no toiletries.

Most 4 ⭐️hotels I have stayed (not London) offer the basic toiletries and bottled water.

Bed was clean but mattress completely worn out. The sofa and chair in the room where dirty, I don’t want to imagine what’s was that, I didn’t even put my suitcase on top of it.

You might think the following day the smell of weed would have gone away, but no, it was coming from the air dust so I don’t know which room or service area it came from.

My partner wanted to leave to our second hotel after one night ( thankfully we only booked 2) but as it was a same day check in the rate was 600ish so we had to stay.

He showers daily twice at least once per day, he couldn’t shower the check out date in the morning and preferred to wait till evening for the new hotel. 🫠

Check out it’s at noon, we arrived 10 to noon to take our bags and leave just to find out the key had already been disabled for the room access not the whole room section so we were all the way up when he had to go back all the way down to get it activated again to leave. If check out is at noon, shouldn’t it work till noon?

Finally everyday we had to go through the cleaning trolley and all the trash (rubbish) that came out from the rooms as it was almost the size of the aisle so you had to squeeze between the wall and the trash to exit or enter as they were always fixing a room. What a great experience.

I was confortable with the brand because in its Abu Dhabi branch and Dubai branch, experience has been completely different.

They don’t ask you to ask for room cleaning, they take ID of everyone, they provide bottled water, their beds are not worn out, room sofas are clean and no unsolicited weed smell is given, so it was a shock to have a completely different experience in UK where the brand is originally from.

Mind you Premier inn in Dubai and Abu Dhabi it’s a completely different experience (to the good) and they are a 3 star hotel can’t be rated more because facilities are not of a higher rate but they offer swimming pool, spa, ironing, laundry, great restaurant, business center, fitness center and EVERY DAY cleaning without having to ask.

How could a worn out, smelly room,with no ID verification, no working restaurant, no bottled water hotel be given 4 stars?

UK hotel rating must be off by 2 stars at least 1 and it wouldn’t be fair to the branches they have in UAE that provide a proper 3...