Premier Travel Inn, Brighton

...16 of us at the Premier Travel Inn in the City Centre for two nights, at a total cost of £1040.00.

So here are some more details about the place and my personal experience of staying there for two nights.

---Location---

The Premier Travel Inn is situated on North Street; and is an office block conversion; North Street is notorious as being one of the busiest roads in Brighton as it is the main bus route ...
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Unlike most Premier Lodges, this one does not have a Car Park; in fact the nearest one is the NCP Theatre Car Park which is only 150 yards away behind the building where the pedestrian entrance is located, with the car entrance in the next main road up in Church Street.

If you leave your car there you will be paying by the hour. For a 24 hour stay it can cost in the region of £25. Okay if there is 4 in the group to share ... more

Hello there. I though for my 19th review that I would diversify into something else instead of the plethora of secret agent DVD's that I've reviewed up to now, so here goes of a review into new territory….. mobile switched off please.

For my 32nd birthday I managed to persuade my friends to come down to Brighton for the weekend to celebrate, so I booked 8 rooms for 16 of us at the Premier Travel Inn in the City Centre for two nights, at a total cost of £1040.00.

So here are some more details about the place and my personal experience of staying there for two nights.

---Location---

The Premier Travel Inn is situated on North Street; and is an office block conversion; North Street is notorious as being one of the busiest roads in Brighton as it is the main bus route for the majority of the services for the area. But on the flipside it is handy for the Lanes, the Beach and the Pier which are 2 and 5 minutes away by foot respectively. So, on that front, that cannot be faulted at all as this is nice and central.

---Room---

I was pleasantly surprised by the style and décor of the rooms. All have enough space to freely move about with the standard walk in shower facilities present. The beds are doubles, and I have to admit are very, very comfortable to sleep on.

When I was there it was the middle of summer, the room I had was facing the outside of the building onto North Street itself. At 3am, the Sussex Police decided that they would pull a car over. Even though I was 4 floors up, because the vents above the window could not be shut, meant that this rendered the double glazed windows utterly useless. It got better, after 15 minutes of blue lights, three more cars with the 'blues and twos' going in full force turned up. Needless to say my other half and I didn't get much sleep that night…. can't really boast as it was for the wrong reason entirely!!

The room is equipped with the standard array of electrical items, Hairdryer, Kettle, Satellite TV/ Radio combi, trouser press, and air con controls. Also full length mirror, plenty of shelf and case storage is available. In fact this is really the standard short stay check list with furniture and facilities with a gear towards the business user; as the room does have an Internet facility, as well as a work table for the laptop user.

The shower was a proper power shower and gave the fully refreshed feeling when used. If you need to use an Iron and Ironing Board, then these can be provided by Reception as necessary.

The best part for me is always opening the door for the first time as you get the scent of the room. When I did this here I got a new furniture smell, which was very satisfying.

---Hotel Facilities---

The hotel reception is located on the first floor above street level. When my 'gang' arrived we found that we had to queue for quite a while as there were only two people on reception. For 8 rooms to be checked in that took nearly 50 minutes to complete the check in process and there was at least 35 people behind us. This was very disappointing as the staff seemed to have there own conversation between themselves when dealing with the awaiting guests.

One of the issues is that people come to Brighton for organising Stags and Hen parties and that you are going to get a large mass of people turning up in one go, something that I thought would have been catered for on reception. So the experience that I had been not was what I expected from such a well known chain.

Other facilities include a bar, where the prices are a little bit above that of the pubs in the surrounding area. This is a good place to meet for some drinks before moving on. A wide selection of beers and wines are available as well draft lagers and liquers.

Breakfast is served up till10am in the restaurant, the price is an additional cost and not included in the room price. When I was there I paid and an extra £7.50 for breakfast. But to be honest it was worth it and it was help yourself as well, meaning if you had a hangover you could drink as much Coffee as you like.

---Car Parking---

Unlike most Premier Lodges, this one does not have a Car Park; in fact the nearest one is the NCP Theatre Car Park which is only 150 yards away behind the building where the pedestrian entrance is located, with the car entrance in the next main road up in Church Street.

If you leave your car there you will be paying by the hour. For a 24 hour stay it can cost in the region of £25. Okay if there is 4 in the group to share the expense, but expensive if a couple or on your own. We even checked out the other Car Parks within a 10 minute walk, give or take a pound or so all are about the same price. The Theatre Car Park has all modern CCTV cameras covering all areas and is secure enough, so it will do the job. But as an alternative I would recommend parking in Churchill Square as that is only 6 minutes walk away and is more of a modern car park then this one which is of seventies concrete design.

Guards walk around both car parks at the various times and all payments can be made on Credit Card if needed. Both also have Help Points available. My advice would be if you do not need to rely on the car and seeing as Brighton Central Train Station is only a 10 minute walk away, that the train would be the better option to get there.

---Prices and booking---

The prices of a room can vary depending on when you stay; it is cheaper in the week compared to the weekend. Monday - Thursday is £60 per room, with Friday to Sunday £65 per room. The good thing is that the price is per room and not per person.

When I arranged my Birthday I booked the rooms in January for the last weekend in July as the year before I could not get anything after April. You also have to be aware that if Brighton has conference taking place across a week or weekend then to find a hotel room will be nigh on impossible, so booking early is a must if you want to stay here.

Booking the 8 rooms was easy, I managed to do it all on-line at www.premiertravelinn.com and reserved all the rooms by Credit Card, all confirmation was e-mailed to me direct. Great no problems and was very impressed with the speed, that was until someone decided to drop out and I had a room spare, that was when the fun began.

After being told in a rude manner by the Hotel that I was not able to alter the booking at all as it was a standard two night stay because it was the height of the season. I was not prepared to lose £130 and after a frantic search round the people who said no I was able to collar someone to attend. Name of the booking changed over the phone. Problem sorted. Phew!

---General---

Brighton is always a busy place and in the Summer even more so, the Hotel itself is going to be full of people on Stag do's and Hen Parties. If you're not out celebrating it may be wiser to stay somewhere like the Preston Park Hotel which is a little further out of town and away from the hustle and bustle of the area. I think in hindsight that having an external facing room was not to my best advantage; my friends who had a room facing the back of the building were rudely awoken at 5.30 am when all the glass bottles from the bar were placed in the skip (at once!), one of them got such a shock from this he nearly hit his head on the ceiling as he jumped out of bed and managed to wake everyone on that side of building as well.

As you can imagine later that morning when we met for Breakfast we were all bleary eyed as only one couple got a good nights sleep, and we found out that this was because there room faced an internal arboretum and was not external facing at all. For the record if required I think that was room 415. Also as Brighton is a 24 hour place, there will always be people coming back to the Hotel throughout various times in various states of soberness.

As I said earlier, if you are there for a night out then this is an ideal place to stay for the location. The only reason I got any sleep on the second night was down to the 10 pints I had to drink that day!

Although I stayed here and we all had a good weekend, it is not a place I would rush back to stay in, my advice is be aware that you are staying in the City Centre and that your room could be overlooking a main road. The Customer Service aspect needs to be completely reviewed as well.

Until next time… Tim
 

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