Winchester hotel

Excellent location just a 20 minute walk into Winchester, bit of a cardio back up hill. Excellent reception and left to room. Clean rooms as expected from Premier with kettle and very roomy shower room. Had a good nights sleep as complete silence! I did wake up and worry as I looked out on my car seeing it parked safely if I should have payed for parking! In the morning the excellent receptionist explained car park has number plate recognition and no worries I could pay for a ticket when I leave.

Purely an overnight stay so it ticked the box. However after a rather fraught journey to the hotel, due to overnight road closures, road works, etc. we arrived a bit later than anticipated only to be told that the adjoining restaurant was not serving food due to freezer problems!! As it was a Sunday night not much else open in Winchester! Premium room was tired looking, we were not offered the code to access the premium WiFi, which was included in our rate. Breakfast the following morning, at just before 9am looked sparse and picked over and no staff visible refreshing the buffet. So we declined. Overall we wouldn’t normally use a premier inn through choice but it was a last minute booking and central to where we need to be.

I had a really bad night's sleep here, and I can fall asleep almost anywhere. I barely had a more than 2-3 hours sleep and in the morning I realised why. The room is just way to hot, and there's no way to set the temperate lower that 19 degrees C. That's way too hot for me, but maybe it’s fine for some. Opening the window seemed an obvious solution... No. The windows are locked shut with no way to open them. The manager said that I can't set the temp lower than 19 because that's the minimum they allow. I've never experienced this situation in a hotel before, a room that's too hot and not being able to open a window. I won't be staying in a Premier hotel again if I can help it.

The location and overall atmosphere was good, the room was clean, bed comfortable and staff fine. There was an issue with the air conditioning where it doesn't blow cold during the evenings, this happened on all three nights, I reported it the second and third nights and attempts to reset it wasn't that great. I reported this to Premier inns customer feedback team via WhatsApp and aside the initial acknowledgement and telling me it's being investigated, they have ignored my chaser messages and I've had to escalate it, awaiting response. That's my major complaint.

Generally Premier Inn is a safe bet but unfortunately Winchester Premier Inn was not up to the usual standards. We booked 2 Premier Plus rooms - these were scruffy and needed a refresh. The headboards to the beds were scratched and worn and the carpets were stained. The rooms were reasonably clean and the beds were ok, but the rooms were tired and just didn’t feel cared for. As these were the Premier Plus and therefore more expensive rooms, I wonder what the ‘standard’ rooms were like? Unfortunately the shared areas also felt like they needed an update. The carpet outside the lifts on the 3rd floor was very dirty and off-putting. Some of the edging of the wall by the lift had been repaired with tape. The automatic door opening button from the car park to the lifts did not work. Breakfast was a mixed experience - the server was obviously very tired and appeared to be working alone. Even though we went down to breakfast with an hour to go before it closed, most of the juice jugs were empty, there was no water and again the whole thing did not feel as though anyone cared enough. A shame as Premier Inn is usually much better than this.