London Woolwich (Royal Arsenal) hotel

Normally you can rely on a Premier Inn to give a good room at a reasonable price. However, this was not the case here. Good lord it was like sleeping (or trying to) in a sauna. The room was incredibly hot and humid. The ventilation simply did not seem to work. Normally, I would have opened a window, but this had been locked shut and the handle removed (not sure at all why). Definitely not the good night expected!

Was very dissapointed with this hotel, I usually love Premier Inn wherever we visit and therefore don't usually bother reading reviews before booking. On arrival there were 2 self check in machines that were out of order, the staff on reception didn't even bother to look up so I tried to check in on my PI app but eventually the receptionist did ask if we had a reservation but it felt like we were a inconvenience. Once at our room, the smell of stale cigarettes was horrendous. And unable to open the window at all as no handle (it had been removed). Tried popping out and leaving the air con on but that just meant we returned to a cold and smelly room. It was late so we climbed into bed, and one of the reasons I book PI is because the extras beds in family rooms are good with proper mattresses so it didn't dissapoint in this area. This is a noisy hotel though, lots of banging and residual noise from the floor above (again not something that is usually a problem with PI). At breakfast the staff were really friendly but sadly 3 staff to seat people, take payments, clear tables, top up food, cook food, clear plates, load the dishwasher, empty dishwasher etc etc safe to say there was a lot of waiting around for things but the poor staff were working very very hard. Food was nice though. Final thought, ignore the directions from the app, we were on foot from the station and it wanted to take us well beyond where the hotel was actually located. Useful things to note, very close to the tube station and the uber boats into Central London, close to the Acosta Centre, and there is a Lidl over the road.

Convenient to LCY, just two stops past on the DLR, it made a good alternative to the more expensive Excel arena area. Room the typical Premier Inn layout and design feels fresh still. Kind service. Some odour issues around must in our room, but this cleared out quickly when we turned on the aircon. Would consider again if needed the location.

This place is a failed experiment in “how few staff can we get away with having for a hotel”. There are two check in machines. One was broken so we had to queue for the other. It spits out one key. There’s no machine to get duplicates and you need it both to operate the lift and lights in the room (other cards don’t work). So I leave my family sitting in the dark while I go back to the car for our luggage. The tv remote control was out of battery, but we couldn’t find someone to replace it on our first try. The shower leaks: it sprays water directly sideways past the shower curtain into the room. Noticed this in the morning, but there was no one to tell at check out and housekeeping obviously don’t check it so the next people will have the same issue. There’s no bin in the lobby, is that to save on cleaners too? So leave smelly rubbish in your room, or just on the floor in the lobby like someone else did.

We stayed for one night, as we had an appointment at a London Hospital and travelled from the coast. The hotel stay helped to break the journey & allowed a lay in before the early start we had from there