Premier Travel Inn Stevenage - Central, Stevenage

PREMIER TRAVEL INN - STEVENAGE CENTRAL
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Located just outside of the centre of Stevenage and within a five minute walk of the Leisure Park, you could say that this Premier Travel Inn has an ideal location. This only holds true if you actually like Stevenage!

Friendly check-in staff are available on the reception throughout the night and when you do check ...
...reference to my stay at Premier Travel Inn. The staff were really helpful and friendly to me at all times and were always respectful of my wishes, the rooms were quite basic but very clean and the food was delicious.
My negatives were the cost of the stay and the lack of extra channels on the TV. That is obviously a brand issue though because I assume that all hotels under the chain are very similar.

A decent stay. I would recommend ... more

PREMIER TRAVEL INN - STEVENAGE CENTRAL
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Located just outside of the centre of Stevenage and within a five minute walk of the Leisure Park, you could say that this Premier Travel Inn has an ideal location. This only holds true if you actually like Stevenage!

Friendly check-in staff are available on the reception throughout the night and when you do check in you will be given an electronic room card which is standard at all major uk hotel chains now for security purposes.

My stay at this hotel was for two nights and the cost of this was £65 per night. My arrival was quite late (9pm-ish) on a Sunday night ahead of a training course on the Monday morning. The decision to stay in a hotel was rushed onto me by the fact that I couldn't seem to find a decent B and B for love nor money.

At £65 a night, I thought that the prices were a little high if I'm being totally honest but before you have experienced the stay, it is far too early to say really. For that price in a town that is quite some distance outside of London you would expect a very comfortable bed, good TV facilities and a good service at the minimum really.

The room that I was given was immaculately cleaned so kudos to the cleaning staff for that. The bed seemed well presented and with clean sheets but of course the most important issue is how comfortable it is rather than the presentation, that I will get on to.

A bit of a disappointment for me was the terrible amount of channels available on my TV. To have just the basic five channels and roughly another ten pretty ordinary channels I thought was a bit of a poor show really.

So after a while of checking my room out I thought that it would be rude not to check out the downstairs bar whilst I was still very alert. Upon arrival I noticed that they had the Cricket live on Sky on the bar television which several people were crowded round. Typical I thought, have Sky TV on in the bar where people are buying drinks.

Anyhow I bought myself a bottle of Magners which was £3 I think although my memory is a little hazy but this I thought was pretty reasonable because I have paid in excess of £4 in city bars before.

The bar is pretty small but has a nice and intimate feel to it. The bar staff are usually doubled up reception staff I think but they are still friendly all the same, or at least the ones I dealt with are. The drinks list is pretty extensive for just a plain hotel bar so I was impressed with that.

After watching some of the cricket and realising that the bar was close to closing (11pm-ish), I decided that I fancied more of a drink to help me to sleep so I asked the two girls on reception if they knew any good off licenses nearby where I could get a bottle of wine or a couple of cans to see the night off. They seemed to find this a bit amusing (not surprisingly) and said that I'd have to go all the way into town if I wanted to do so. Feeling a little silly I realised that I was best to just get to sleep as I needed to be up at roughly 7:30-8am.

My sleep was pretty good on the whole. The bed was very comfortable in comparison to the likes of IBIS, Travelodge and Days Inn and I had no complaints on that score at all. I had quite a few things on me that were worth quite a bit of money so being the paranoid guy that I am, I made a point of telling reception not to send a cleaner into my room as I left for the day.

My request was duly noted and granted. Upon my arrival back at the hotel the following evening nothing was moved in my room so I was very pleased by that. Considering it was only a short stay, there would hardly be much need for cleaners to do anything in my room.

The last thing really for me to sample of the hotel was the food. I had made a point of eating here as a friend of mine who used to work at a Travel Inn once mentioned to me that the food was always good.
I was not massively hungry so my intentions were really to have something light.

Having viewed the menu though in true form I completely ignored my plan and decided to have a steak. The option I went for was an 8 oz Sirloin Steak. The steak came with mushrooms, tomato and some garlic herb type potatoes.
The meal cost £13.15 and the glass of White Pinot Grigio I drank with it cost £4.25.

The meal was great I thought. The steak was cooked to perfection and was not too hard, it tasted great. Even more enjoyable for me were the delightful potatoes which were lovely and soft and given extra flavour by the garlicky taste to them.
The wine was standard plonk. Absolutely nothing to write home about.

In terms of cost, the meal was really quite pricey for one person to eat and have a drink, but quite frankly it did make my night. Eat now, worry about the price later was very much my feelings.

On the whole I would say that I had mixed, but mainly positive feelings with reference to my stay at Premier Travel Inn. The staff were really helpful and friendly to me at all times and were always respectful of my wishes, the rooms were quite basic but very clean and the food was delicious.
My negatives were the cost of the stay and the lack of extra channels on the TV. That is obviously a brand issue though because I assume that all hotels under the chain are very similar.

A decent stay. I would recommend it for Stevenage because I had a pretty unsatisfactory stay at the IBIS there which made me wish that I paid a little extra on that occasion! 

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