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hub by Premier Inn London Soho

Florian Buechting Hotels & Accommodation No Comments

hub by Premier Inn London Soho

116.50 GBP
hub by Premier Inn London Soho
3.3

Rating

 3.3/5

Flyctory.com Pros

  • Great hotel concept
  • Very nice hotel
  • Free high speed WiFi (in contrast to "normal" Premier Inn Hotels)

Flyctory.com Cons

  • Permanently cooling air conditioning (in winter)
  • No service at breakfast
  • Employee grabbing hot items from breakfast buffet with bare hands

I have been to quite a lot of Premier Inn hotels in recent times. In Germany as well as in the United Kingdom, the budget hotel chain became more and more a reliable travel option for me. You know what you get (and what you don’t get…) – and most of the time it is not too bad. The more I was curious to check out one of Premier Inn’s alternative hotel concept before a Weird Al Yankovic show in London in February 2023. The hub by Premier Inn London Soho was my very first contact with the hub by Premier Inn concept. Here are my thoughts.

 

hub by Premier Inn London Soho – Location

At booking, I was looking for a hotel in the heart of Soho – and that’s indeed what I got: the hotel is really a few walking minutes away from Piccadilly Square, Leicester Square or Oxford Street. Don’t even dare to think about taking this labyrinth of one way streets without car parks by car – the hub by Premier Inn is made for public transport. The stations Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road or Piccadilly Circus are al not too far away. Having said that, none of them is absolutely close to the hotel.Tottenham Court Road also connects to the Elizabeth Line.

Soho is very vibrant and offers a great range of food and shopping options. Thus it is not sensible to pick out certain locations.

 

hub by Premier Inn London Soho – Room

I had one night at the hub by Premier Inn. The one night stay was at a prepaid rate of 116.50 GBP for the Thursday to Friday night in February 2023 in London. On top of that, I prepaid 7 GBP for breakfast. The room was a so-called Large Room – and indeed, it was an absolutely nice one. The key thing missing is a window. The room is a bit of compact, but comes with smart solutions like a suitcase storage underneath the bed. Thus, the room feels perfect for a city trip. I also enjoyed the wide work desk. A very nice feature is also that you have all air condition and light controls on both rear wings of the bed. Or better: it would be in regards of the air conditioning. No matter how I set it up, it just cooled down the room with the same intensity, which was unbearable. I finally switched the whole system off by a switch right underneath the ceiling. Smaller people like my wife wouldn’t be even able to reach it.

The shower bathroom was fully in line with the room design: compact, but with an excellent usage of the available space. The location of toilet paper was a bit odd. The space underneath the sink featured the only dustbin in the room. The room was absolutely clean. A very interesting feature is also the way how the beds have been made (see pictures above). You need to take care that you don’t lose track of the time in the room, though – due to the lack of daylight and a clock, you need to be very disciplined with yourself. I appreciated the bottle of free water in the room.

 

hub by Premier Inn London Soho – Breakfast

I was really curious about the breakfast, especially as it is extremely cheap and just charged with 7 GBP. Overall, the breakfast looked very good and was quite close to the ones I am used to in “normal” Premier Inn places. The service was very weak, though… There was simply no service. This lead to several issues: the scrambled eggs become more and more “crispy” under the heating device, if something is not available, it is out and there are some menu items, namely vegan sausage, which are not in the buffet, but obviously should be made on demand… Maybe you could go into the kitchen and fry it by yourself? The toaster was too small for the bread provided.

The only staff I met was a member of the technical maintenance team – who twice took a pork sausage out of the heated part of the buffet with his bare hands. Disgusting. The breakfast area can be used as lounge for hanging out, having a drink or enjoying complimentary coffee and tea. This was really nice.

 

hub by Premier Inn London Soho – Service

Typical for many Premier Inn locations, check-in starts at 15:00 strictly. If you arrive at 14:45, you have to wait. I did and enjoyed the beautiful lounge. The staff as such was great and as I did some minor work in the lounge (at free tea and coffee), I was surprised that hub by Premier Inn hotel have free WiFi at good speed – in contrast to the in-fact mandatory 5 GBP upgrade for Ultimate WiFi in their normal places. When I arrived in the morning, I could also leave my luggage in the hotel for free. Overall, I really enjoyed the good service. After complaining about the air conditioning, the receptionist said that they can control the air condition centrally. However, there is neither a phone in the room nor a WhatsApp chat or similar to reach them without walking down to the lobby.

 

hub by Premier Inn London Soho – My View

I am not sure if I would like their smaller and more compact room concept, but the concept of the Large Room at the hub by Premier Inn really convinced me. I feel that it is a great hotel concept, the London Soho outlet is located at an excellent place as well. The hotel could be closer to the Underground, but therefor, you are indeed in the heart of Soho. Unfortunately, the service attitude in the lounge at breakfast and the air conditioning issue lead to significant downgrades. Bad luck, the hotel could do much better.

 

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