Premier Inn Harlow North (Harlow Mill)

Great little hotel. Very clean and staff are polite and friendly. May seem like a small thing to others but I like opening my window for fresh air being asthmatic but a lot of the moden hotels have windows that can't open. So reliant on air conditioning. So opening my window at this hotel was a bonus. Thank you Summer the receptionist on the desk that day I checked in your brilliant at what you do.

We were 'greeted' by the receptionist, who didn't ask us if we had a car and if we did to enter the reg, thankfully we happened to discover that ourselves. She was more fixated on what time we wanted breakfast, to which we were unsure, and advised that we would like to see what time we woke up and then decide, but was told that this wasn't an option and that we had to book. We don't get many stays without the children, so would have liked the option not to have to set an alarm, and not to be hungry if we had woken early and had to wait as we had booked breakfast later. The first room we were allocated smelt of smoke, so we carried our bags back to reception to ask for a new room, we were given a new room, which was occupied, I don't know who was more shocked or embarrassed, us or the chap lying on the bed in his underwear. We again returned with our bags to reception, and at no point was we offered an apology, we were then given a third room, this time unoccupied, but dated, tatty and questionable cleaning (like all 3 we went into). I understand that this is a 3 star hotel, but for £159 for one night, we were expecting a little more than a small, cramped, tatty, hot (no air con), dirty room. Breakfast was okay, but it took quite a while to come out, the worst bit was the off putting smell of sewage/damp when you walked into the bar area to get to the restaurant.

Really disappointed with this Premier Inn. Overall its really tatty. My rooms bathroom has panels that don’t fit properly, lots of old grubby sealant. Tv is tiny and the so called free WiFi is terrible. No mobile phone signal coverage. It’s time the owner provided proper free guest WiFi in this day and age. Premier Inn don’t seem to respond to competition from Airbnb and other hotels.