Arundel hotel

The “accessible” room was completely unacceptable. A guest with one leg could not safely use the bathtub, and there was no shower chair or walk-in shower. They gave us unsafe accessible room The carpet smelled, the room was extremely hot, the fan was small and noisy, and the hygiene was poor. The room urgently needs renovation. Charging £200 for what felt like a hot, smelly basement was outrageous. I felt misled, disappointed, and angry.

Over the years, I’ve stayed in quite a few Premier Inns, in places like Norwich, Macclesfield and Poole. I had always found them clean, modern and having big comfortable beds in big bedrooms with an equally big bathroom en suite – and good value for money too. This hotel isn’t really in Arundel being over a mile away. It’s just a lonely roadhouse beside the busy A27. As can be seen from the attached photos, the place looked scruffy from the outside even just as we arrived. The inside also needed refreshing but the rooms, especially did. And our room was grubby in need of a thorough clean. There were no water glasses, so the two sole tea/coffee mugs in the room had to double up. On the plus side there was plenty of hot water and the bathroom had a bath (but don’t all Premier Inns have baths in their en suites?). The bed was big and comfortable. The staff were also pleasant. We arrived, hungry, at 8:15pm and were told that the kitchen at the adjacent Beefeater Inn had closed at 8:00pm despite a note in our room saying it took orders for meals until 8:45pm. There’s a McDonalds up the room, they suggested. No thanks! So we had a drink of what seemed like watered-down Malbec in the Beefeater, consuming a bag of crisps as our supper! A truly sad occasion! Never again. I could have tolerated this if the room was cheap, but it wasn’t. It cost £188. At these prices and based on the state of this property, I doubt we’ll ever use Premier Inns again. Such a shame as it used to be so good.

Thank you to Holly and the reception team for their excellent customer service, an asset to the Hotel. Because of them, I will still continue to book with Premier Inn across the chain in the UK for my business needs when traveling.

After booking we had misgivings, having read the online reviews but it was OK and did the job. I'm not really concerned about the fact that according to some reviews the exterior needs a lick of paint but the lack of care does indicate how the Premier Inn brand is slipping (our preference these days is to stay at the other big UK budget chain, something that I could never envisage a few years ago). I can never understand why reviewers complain about the lack of air con when it's obvious from the Premier Inn booking site that the place doesn't have any. It says it has a 360 degree fan...not air con. We had a fairly flustered check in by someone who kept saying "I normally work mornings". Note to Premier Inn management - train your staff. It was actually funny rather than terrible and one aspect will be laughed about by us for years to come. When we arrived there was a five day old newspaper in the car park. Days later it was still there. Note to Premier Inn management - tidy the place up! Take a bit of pride in the brand. Other than that, it was a typical Premier Inn stay - the room was ok (apart from the lack of air con LOL).

What a shame. We have stayed in Premier Inns all over the country, they are our go to brand for value and comfort. However, Arundel has bucked the trend to such an extent, we may need to rethink. The position is fine, staff very good and helpful. However, the exterior is dreadful, it desperately needs some TLC. Inside not a great deal better, no aircon meant room was suffocatingly warm. No chance of sleeping. For what we paid, we feel we have been royally ripped off, which is such a sad way to end a stay. Did not want to stay to sample the breakfast.