For a couple of decades HOB and I slept in budget hotels and guest houses. In some countries (memorably Albania) the cheap rooms were clean and sometimes even lovely. In other countries (looking at you, France) there seemed to be a national effort to make these rooms poorly heated with sketchy beds reeking of body odor and bathrooms with used bandaids stuck on the walls. In a way it was fun to get a room that came with a tiny dog or bizarrely sexual artwork or dozens of expresso cups (but no expresso maker). These days I’m traveling solo and I’m not looking to stay someplace fun: what I really want is an impersonal budget room.
Earlier this year in England, I found my ideal impersonal budget room with the Premier Inn Hub chain. I can’t exactly say Premier Inn is cheap—England (especially London) is generally pretty expensive. But the price is acceptable considering the quality and—critically—the consistency.
Premiere Inn has figured out how to make a compact room with everything you need; comfortable mattress and pillows, hot shower, excellent sound proofing and free coffee. You can control the temperature and lights from a panel on the bed. The rooms are clean and the set up is quite safe—every area of the hotel is accessed through key cards and you can’t enter any part of the hotel outside of the lobby and the section your room is in. They check your bag in a secure room.
With limited time I was moving around the country quickly and the consistency of the chain was a comfort. I was in a new place but—weirdly—always in the same room. There would be my green chair and the slot to hold my backpack under the bed. I didn’t go through the nightly “how the hell does this shower work?” struggle.
The Premier Inn rooms are a kind of liminal space. I never had one with a window so they were completely unconnected with the outside world. I even had two with a fake patio view—my rooms had a window looking out into an enclosed, inaccessible space filled with artificial plants lit with blue fluorescent light. I’ll take these little Potemkin village-patios of plastic orange trees as a replacement for the sketchy cheap rooms of my former travels any time, at least when I’m next in England.
Picnic at the Cathedral 
Traveliing solo there is no one to laugh with at the disasters – or to keep you warm under the paper thin coverlet…..so Premier Inns look like the ideal solution.
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We had a room in Santiago de Compostela with two twin beds but we crammed into the same one because it was January and apparently the owners didn’t think heat was a requirement…
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Dare I say it, perish the thought!
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As a (part-time? dual national?) Brit I have an ambivalent attitude to the Purple Palace, as some of my most ironic colleagues call Premier Inn.
There are those, such as the ones scattered around Heathrow, that are perfectly fine, though the aircon could be a bit ratty at times.
Then there’s the Barry Island Premier Inn. Near Cardiff. Maybe it’s because I spent days, weeks even, there. In winter. Maybe it’s because the whole Barry Island neighbourhood is as bleak as a dentist’s waiting room… but I honestly hate that place. I’d sooner check in for a week in that room I had once in Isfahan, Iran, that reeked of goat than spend a minute at the Barry Island Premier Inn.
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Why were you staying in the Purple Palace of Barry Island for weeks? I suspect you were just lacking a Potemkin Patio and then you would have been cozy.
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A work assignment… which wasn’t bad, just out in the sticks.
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Premier Inns are usually regarded mockingly here in the UK, so it’s interesting to have their virtues pointed out.
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HOB and I last booked a room in London in 2003, I think. We stayed at the Queen’s Park Hotel and every night I folded a towel to strategically cover the wires sticking out of the mattress . Give me the Purple Palace any day!
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