Copyright scotsman
It’s often said that this country is going to the dogs. Most of the time, it isn’t true. Living standards are up, violent crime is down, unemployment is low and cancers and heart attacks are more surviveable than ever before. We’ve never had it so good…..but we don’t seem to know it. As evidence of that, behold the garish purple hue of the Premier Inn. When it comes to overnight accommodation, it is the Toyota Corolla of hospitality. Like the Japanese car maker, it adheres strictly to the principles of straightforward design with minimal use of complex, failure-prone features. And crucially, it’s cheap with prices starting at just £40 a night. But despite all these good reasons to stay, the business has reported a 3 per cent drop in revenues in the past year. Have we forgotten what life was like before the Premier Inn arrived? I haven’t. From Inverness to Cardiff I have a memory box brimming with awful experiences in some grotty guest houses and horrific cheap hotels where the only common features were mould, broken furniture and a grumbling hostility to guests. I’m thinking about the owner of a bed and breakfast in Wales who refused to serve me breakfast because I’d had a shower at 7am “and used all the hot water”. Or the cheap hotel in London where I caught scabies from unwashed towels. All these used to be regular delights until Premier Inn came along and revolutionised the overnight stay. They worked out most of us don’t want a Corby trouser press or a selection of stationery or a toothpick that doubles as nose hair remover. We just want a clean and comfortable bed, a hot shower and a TV that doesn’t require a degree in electronics to operate. Based on those guiding principles, the Premier Inn was born and it now operates at more than 800 sites across the UK. In every one of the 80,000 rooms the experience is the same and that is the joy of it. A basic room at The Balmoral in Edinburgh last night cost £825. For that, you might get to see Edinburgh Castle but alternatively you might have a bird’s eye view of sweaty trainers in Foot Locker on Princes Street. When you book a room at Premier Inn, you know exactly what you are going to get for your money – a slightly overheated, hermetically sealed box with a view of the bloke next door’s van in the car park. It might not be first choice for a honeymoon or a romantic weekend away and if you are staying for more than three nights, you really need your head examined but when you’re out on the town and just need a good night’s sleep before another day begins, it does what it says on the tin. And then there is the breakfast buffet where you can load up with bacon, egg, sausage, beans and hash browns plus mountains of toast and gallons of coffee for the same price as a flat white and a croissant in Pret a Manger. It’s not premier and revenues suggest it’s definitely not ‘in’ but we’re lucky to have this stalwart of overnight stays. And if we don’t want to return to a world of coin operated showers and tinned grapefruit for breakfast, we’d better stop taking it for granted.
