Another set of shows of my favorite musical Rock of Ages in England, another city, another hotel: In mid June 2022, I headed to Portsmouth on the South Coast of the British Isles. The hotel prices are clearly above average in this city and so I went for another Premier Inn hotel – the chain more and more feels to become my standard stay in the country. Here is my review of the Premier Inn Portsmouth City Centre.
Premier Inn Portsmouth City Centre – Location
There were two key reasons why I opted for this stay: the price and the location. The Premier Inn Portsmouth City Centre is really right at the Portsmouth & Southsea station. It takes you some three minutes from the hotel exit to the platforms. Please bote that there is also another station, Portsmouth Harbour. There is a bus stop right in front of the hotel, which connected me to the harbor area, the theatre and other locations. Apart from that, Portsmouth has some decent train connections.
The North side of the train station is the South tip of the main Portsmouth Shopping Area. Thus, it is easy to fulfil your traveler needs.Right next to the hotel entrance, there is also a small Tesco supermarket. You should, however, not rely on their opening times – the store was always closed after my musical visits, even though opening times still stated some 30 minutes remaining opening.
Premier Inn Portsmouth City Centre – Room
I had a two night weekend stay at the Premier Inn Portsmouth City Centre. The flexible rate for the stay was 255 GBP, with an additional 9.50 GBP per day for breakfast. The room looked quite nice at first sight. It was rather spacious and also featured a cozy couch close to the window. However, parts of the room were really run down. One light was not working and the switch of the work desk lamp was absolutely obviously broken (see last picture). I just don’t get why housekeeping and technical service just feels to refuse to talk to each other in so many places.
The bathtub with fixed shower bathroom met the Premier Inn expectations: clean, functional, soap and shampoo / shower gel in dispensers and the “traditional” lack of a toilet brush.
Premier Inn Portsmouth City Centre – Breakfast
This Premier Inn comes with their traditional restaurant branding, the Thyme. The restaurant area also features a Full English breakfast buffet. Premier Inn breakfasts are reliable and predictable. I felt that the Premier Inn Portsmouth City Centre did a good job. The buffets were well maintained and the staff felt attentive.
Premier Inn Portsmouth City Centre – Service
The staff at the hotel was really kind. British Premier Inn standard WiFi is not suitable for any kind of professional usage, the premium option is 5 GBP per day, weekly or monthly passes give a significant discount. There is an Amazon Locker in the hotel entrance area.
However, the maintenance of the building, especially the elevators, were lousy. The key card reader of one elevator did not work – which means that anybody could go straight from the street to your hotel room. In addition, you could not call an elevator from reception level on 1st floor (one above ground level). This meant that you had to at least take one level on the staircase to take a ride from there. When I arrived at the hotel with luggage, the staff had to run down and grab the elevator – poor guys. Finally, one of the two elevators did not work anymore from Saturday night on.
Premier Inn Portsmouth City Centre – My View
This place could be a really great one. Such an amazing location, which gives you very good traffic connections, short walks from the train to your hotel room and the reliable Premier Inn service. The staff is great. But there is the hotel maintenance. This place urgently needs an investment. And they need to solve their technical issues in a more efficient way. Unfortunately, this leads to a lack of confidence into this hotel from my side.
Ships & Water Travel
Here are more Flyctory.com postings about Ships & Water Travel:
UK Hotels
Here are all my postings about hotels / accomodation in the United Kingdom: