Premier Travel Inn London - Docklands (ExCel),, London

Author's product rating:   

Advantages:	Location, checking in, value for money, clean rooms
Disadvantages:	Cooked breakfast, lifts not working

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I was summoned down to London for a meeting with my company & needed to spend two nights close to the Dartford area. I have used Premier Inn (formerly Travel Inn) for many years in the North of England & must say they provide good basic accommodation.

There a quite a number of Premier Inns in London & by coincidence the one I needed was close to London City Airport where I was flying into & was also the cheapest in the area.
If you ever need to be in London close to Excel, City Airport, O2 Arena, The Dome or Canary Wharf it is worth considering this hotel.

Premier Inn is now the UK's largest hotel chain & they charge per room as opposed to charge per person. They currently have over 500 hotels around the country & in the Middle East. They provide business accounts if required & many of their sites are conveniently located close to motorways, airports or city centres.

Booking a room is simple; their website is very user friendly even if you have no idea where you want to be. You can punch in a location & they will list you all the nearest Premier Inns with a small map. Once you find the one you want it's just a case of giving them dates & numbers & they will confirm if anything is available.

From there, you just need to enter your personal details, such as name, address, number of people staying in the room & your credit card details. They accept all the major credit cards & although they take your card details they do not charge for the room until the day you arrive.
You are sent a confirmation to your email address with the all important booking reference number on it; I find that just taking note of the number is enough. At your request they will even text you the reference number to your mobile phone which is more convenient.

You can book by phone & they do provide little guide books with all their hotels listed. The books are very comprehensive & detailed with phone numbers listed to make bookings if you cannot get on the internet.

A couple of good things about Premier Inns, if you make a booking & need to cancel it, they will accept your cancellation without charging you up to 1pm on the day of your booking. There after you are charged for the room at the full rate. This is a good policy as many hotels & guest houses would charge you even 24 hours in advance.

Also, they have a 100% 'good night guarantee' as regards your stay & even remind you about it when you book in. Obviously you need to have a genuine reason why you want your money back.
If you are kept awake all night by noisy staff or other residents you'll probably get it back or if the heating didn't work. But if your nylon PJ's create static electricity between the sheets & disturbs your sleep, forget it. And before you ask………the answer is no, I only wear my nylon PJ's around the house!!!

I turned up at the Premier Inn at Victoria Docklands (close to the Excel centre), the car park belongs to the Excel centre so during the day you pay from £2.00 to £12.00 depending how long you are parked. Between 5.30pm - 9.30am it is free, the parking machine requires you to enter your registration number. This area doesn't come under the congestion charge area for London.

Booking in was simple & quick, the reception staff were very polite, friendly & efficient. They supply you a card for accessing your room rather than a key. I do prefer keys but the card is handy to store in a wallet when you are out & about.
Their lifts were out of order that day; with six floors of rooms it did cause some problems for some of the residents. My room was on the fifth floor so up I went with my luggage, to enter the fifth level corridor you need your card but it wouldn't work. Back to reception I went where they reprogrammed it, by the time I got back up to the fifth floor I was huffing & puffing like an old warthog!!

The rooms feature the 'Premier Inn new look', dark purple décor which looks better than it sounds. As ever, the rooms were clean but basic, you get a double bed with four pillows, two chairs, small table, flat screen TV with Freeview channels, telephone (pay by card) & Wi-fi via Swisscom which is chargeable.
You also get a hair dryer, a table to work from with ample electrical sockets, kettle, plenty of room for clothes etc & plenty of mirrors. The room had both heating & air conditioning which you can control yourself from a control pad on the wall.
In the bathroom you have a shower, bath & sink with shaver sockets & soap dispensers. What you don't get is hair shampoo or shower caps etc & they are a little mean when it comes to coffee & tea. Two coffee sachets & two tea bags, no biscuits, not even an old custard cream!!

The room rate for weekdays is £88.00 & for London I though that was quite reasonable. You pay an extra £7.50 for breakfast with no choice as regards if you want cooked breakfast price or a continental breakfast price.
Breakfast is served downstairs & is full buffet service, hot & cold food was available along with cereal, porridge, yogurts, bread etc. My only gripe was the toaster produces hot bread & not toast, the scrambled eggs I wouldn't give to my dog & the baked beans were like glue!!

Evening meals were served in the same place; the menu would suit all tastes & is family friendly. You have a decent mixture of starters & the main course provides vegetarian meals, salads, pizzas, Indian food & traditional UK meals. The prices were quite good & the service was good except when I had to ask the staff three times for sauce & being charged for a curry I never had.

Would I recommend this place for a stay in London, yes I would, all though there is no direct access to the London Underground the Docklands Light Railway & stations are close by although a little more expensive than the underground. Yes the hotel is on a flight path & the railway passes by the hotel but I have to say I never heard a thing the two nights I stayed there.