First and foremost, we are regular Premier Inn (and back in the day, former Travel Inn) customers and have stayed here around three times over the past four years.
And each time we have stayed here, the place just seems to get worse.
The building itself is quite shabby and looks to be a refurbished 1970's office-block.
The best/better bits:
Unless the Cardiff hotels have taken a bit of a hit (often the case with major music & sporting events), there is ample parking.
For less than £10 per person, you can purchase a day-pass to the attached David Lloyd leisure centre, which features a full spa and typical gym aside from this, this particular club is a specialist racket club (tennis, badminton, squash etc).
The hotel being an out-of-town location is very quiet but is ideally placed within 5 minutes of the M4 and just 10 minutes car-journey / 60 minutes walk from town / Queen Street Station, and just 10 minutes walk from the nearby retail & leisure parks (Halfords, Maplin, Sainsburys, TGI Fridays etc).
The room is presented with typical Premier Inn fair and the staff are usually quite helpful, however, it is their lack of fore-thought and not responding to repeat requests that has caused me to rate them as average.
The hotel itself is not a good representation of Premier Inn, it resembles both inside and out a typical 1970's government building complete with the repression from that era; my major complaint regarding the rooms is that they are not well insulated/sound-proofed ensuring that noise can be heard from many rooms away.
During our last visit (17.09.11 - my 30th) despite the other guests doing their best not too make too much noise, we (us, and those in the surrounding rooms) were kept awake most of the night as a result of very squeaky/creaky flooring - the hotel was packed and we ended-up on the ground floor right next to the entrance to the leisure centre (we had stayed in this room in 2009 and had experienced a similar night - maybe repairing the floor and ensuring guest satisfaction is not high on the agenda??).
Upon our arrival we were advised that this room (room 5 I think) was the only one available; we took the room spent around 30 mins dealing with the noise of the floor before asking if there were other rooms free in either this or other nearby hotels (we also asked for Caerphilly as this is within 10 miles of Cardiff).
We were advised that there were no other rooms available in this hotel but there were rooms in other hotels but to transfer to another site would incur additional charges (it was either having to pay the full price in both hotels or pay full-price in one and half in the other) thus keeping-us tightly locked into our room and poor customer service - similar experiences by friends in other hotel chains has resulted in free transfers.
It was only on check-out that we were advised by the day-staff that we were incorrectly informed of the hotel transfer the previous evening and that as we had not enjoyed our stay and that the fault is rectifiable, that Premier Inn would provide us with the Good Night Guarantee - had they had agreed to transfer us, Premier would have made money rather than loose it - it also appears as though we were not the only ones - there was a stack of guarantees also on the desk awaiting processing.
This hotel is probably not the best in the chain and certainly not the best of the chain in the area; a better night for roughly the same price (or lower) can be had in: Premier Inn Caerphilly (cheaper but 8 miles from Cardiff city centre / Bute Park - consider if you plan to go to the Brecon Beacons); Cardiff East (also about 8 miles away but even quieter) or Cardiff City Centre South (quiet but walking distance to the centre).
Room Tip: Only the top-level rooms seem to be the best; the ground floor rooms appear to be the worst rooms av...
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This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
