Premier Inn Castleford (Xscape, M62 J32) hotel — Hotel in Wakefield

We were booked in the hotel for 2 weeks due to work being done on our house. The room was booked with meal deals breakfast and lunch. Breakfast is hit and miss with staff doing 4 jobs at the same time. My partner had to abandon his breakfast due to having to go to work. Some mornings its fast some its slow, with many people waiting 20 30 mins just to get seated and then another 15 20 mins for someone to the your order. Then it can be anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes just to recieve it. We booked evening meal tables when told food was on only to go down at set time to be told its microwave meals. As I have a 7 year old child who does not eat them kind of meals I was the forced to go out and get meals for him from other restaurants. We tried out the micromeals last night as we just couldn't afford anymore food out. They only have 1 meal for children rest is adults. And we are told due to staffing issues the restaurant will be closed all week again. So I am forced to either eat out and waste more money or feed my son the same evening meal for a over a week......its not on and they know they have this issue but are not recruiting staff or bringing agency staff in to cover. Its not great and if it was my choice I wouldn't of even chose to stay here. The poor staff are run off their feet and many of them being left with no management over the weekend with lots of angry customers. It needs sorting ASAP because I for one if I ever need a hotel again will not stay here. Prices for rooms and meals are enough but to be told no only 2 staff to cover the rooms is a joke. Not their fault but half of them do not even know what is going on. I asked for my room to be cleaned due to being their with a 7 year old 4 days I come back and the message wasn't even passed out. I am not having to go collect cups etc as they are that short staffed. I get that it is covid but I saw a man wait 1 hour for his breakfast while others who had just sat down were getting theirs faster. The hotel needs to either shut and take no more bookings or they need to get more staff in to cover the areas that are in dire need. I've seen management in the restaurant taking breakfast orders, cleaning rooms etc due to poor staffing. I waited 20 minutes to be seen at the reception because the staff where all chatting in the office in the back. I buzzed 3 times before someone from the breakfast area seen me and sorted me out. Its not good when we are already stressed out as a family due to having to leave our home. You don't expect to be having to clean your own room and change your own beds and chase down cups and bin changes. Most of the staff are friendly enough but you can see how stressed and under pressure they all are. 2 girls over the weekend to give food to rooms manage the bar and the reception. Its not on as customers and the poor staff they need a medal for the stress they get from...

Unfortunately this has ended my love affair with premier inn. Firstly I wanted to book tables for breakfast (knowing the hotel was fully booked during our stay booking in advance normally helps you get breakfast at the time you want). I called the number for this premier inn. It doesn't work. I tried different options all went through to an error message. So I tweeted premier inn - how can I contact this hotel to book breakfast. I got 3 responses - none answered my question.....just told me to book when I arrive. I then got the check in email before arriving. There was an email address to use to book breakfast.....yay....we are getting somewhere. But no.....absolutely no response to the email. So when we arrive to check in I mention the phones "yeah we know there's a problem", and the email "that's just a computer generated message". So I ask to book breakfast to be told they don't do bookings. "Covid or something...."

When we get to breakfast the next day the entire restaurant is full of one big coach party, there was no clean table and no food left. A booking would have allowed us to avoid this time. So they tell us they are coming down the same time the following day. Great we adjust our time to leave a gap between them finishing and us arriving. But no, when we get there they have decided to come down later. Again bookings for us and them would resolve this and smooth out the rush.

Then there is the 'covid rule' to not service a room. Sorry but this just seems like laziness and cost cutting. So we have a full bin for our entire stay, plus dirty cups and glasses. Either put in facilities to get clean cups, glasses and towels, and to empty bins. Or pop in when the room is empty and do these things. For someone that chooses not to have a member of staff in the room they can just leave a do not service hanger on the door. I'm not sure there is a hig covid risk ti either staff or guest if having a room serviced.

So those problems aside the location is good if that's where you need to be...walking distance to a station to Leeds- but last train home on Saturday night is about 9pm. The xscape and shopping outlet are 2 minutes away. But the motorway is noisy.

For some reason the normally comfortable premier inn bed wasn't at all comfy. It either needs a new mattress or it wasn't an official bed. This is the first time ever in a PI the bed wasn't comfy.

So sorry this hotel wasn't on brand, the communication was rubbish and the lack of room servicing poor.

That said the staff at breakfast were helpful...

We usually find Premier inn's are exactly the same and pretty much always reliable, this one however was our first poor experience, firstly we arrived to an ice cold room which when it's cold outside is not ideal, so we changed the heating setting and it blew colder, there was no way to make the room warm so we froze and we both run quite warm generally, this was after we had spent an hour trying to find a parking space on there car park which is far to small for the size and location of the space, we ended up parking not in a bay! then when we went to sleep it sounded like an airplane was taking off in our room and it was the extracter fan from the bathroom, we tried every possible switch in the room to try and turn it off and in the end had to switch off the electrics at the fuse box as it wouldn't shut off otherwise and there was no way we could sleep with that noise! The remote didn't work for the television, the bedside table in our room must have been smashed off at some point and just taken away not replaced, the actual room was clean and tidy but it was just a bit of a shambles of a room, we didn't arrive until around 11pm so by that point we didn't want to call someone up to the room to sort anything out we were just ready for bed but we left as early as possible the next day as it was warmer outside on a freezing day than in our room!

The breakfast was probably the worst breakfast we have had and this is also very unusual for premier inn so overall was not a nice visit, great location though as directly opposite Xscape so restraunts, outlet shops, cinema and more!

We were going to mention about our room in the morning but the person in front of us complained about theirs and the person and reception just said 'I'll let someone know' with a very couldn't care less attitude so we...