Fort William hotel

On the edge of Fort William on a retail park. Easy to walk into town and perfect for the Jacobite express. Rooms clean and updated. Wi-Fi good Breakfast was good but they keep running out of cup, glasses, milk, yoghurt. Mushrooms were amazing. Great location for the Jacobite express. Friendly staff.

Logistically, this Premier Inn is absolutely perfect hence we always stay here. Really cannot beat it. The staff are fantastic and hard working however the hotel is poorly maintained and incredibly under-staffed and has been for the past two years. It is miles behind every other Premier Inn in the UK and badly needs a massive cash injection to bring it up to spec. The restaurant is woeful and should be closed and don’t even get me started on the bar or breakfast but again, the problem lies at Management level and not the poor, over worked staff.

Very understaffed on arrival for check in. Bath was slippery and didn’t have a handheld shower head, only a fixed one. Had a weird way of opening the sick drain, you’d need to rewash your hands after opening it.

When I arrived, it turned out that due to a technical problem by my travel agent (so outside influence of Premier Inn), my reservation had not been made and I did not have a room. They were already fully booked and could have sent me walking. Instead, they did everything they could to make sure I still had a room to sleep in for the two nights of my stay, and went further to ensure my stay was as pleasant as possible despite my stroke of misfortunes. The room was good, and location convenient to pop over to High Street for some shopping and eating. Special shoutout to Andrew at the front desk, who is an absolute legend and a hero of Scottish hospitality.

Was all a bit of a shambles from start to finish. Firstly, we were informed the restaurant was closed having booked the meal deal, so cancelled the dinners we’d booked and ate elsewhere, but were assured that breakfast would be running as usual. In the morning, we got to the restaurant doors (having gone out past reception) to find it was dark and locked up. Returned to reception to be told the chef hadn’t turned up for work so there would be no breakfasts after all, and directed to the local Morrisons cafe. Morrisons had shut their kitchen due to the additional demand so we ended up with a combination of stuff from Morrisons supermarket and the Maccies drive through. Our premium room was meant to come with ultimate WIFI but that wasn’t working and there weren’t enough towels so we had to go and request some. The room was never serviced, so we then needed more towels and had to get milks and coffees from reception also. The hairdryer in the room didn’t work and when we got to reception to check out and check the refund status of the breakfasts, no one was there for some time to speak to us. Then on our last day, the restaurant was open for breakfast but many of the toilets were out of order, leaving only one ladies one open, which needed to be cleaned. We got the impression that there just wasn’t enough staff on and the ones that were working were likely doing more than their fair share, so we decided not to complain to them as they’d probably had enough already. We’ve stayed at Premier Inns on many occasions and this was not what we’ve been used to. We had a night at The Holiday Inn, Edinburgh prior to arriving at Fort William and will be looking for Holiday Inns, rather than Premier Inns for short breaks in future. Much better facilities and experience. It is a very convenient location, but maybe needs better organisation and management.