Premier Inn Bristol South

I’ve stayed at plenty of Premier Inns over the years and usually defend them when people dismiss the chain. Clean rooms, comfortable beds, fair prices, and a familiar standard. Bristol South shattered that trust in less than half an hour. We arrived just before 11pm after more than 16 hours of travel, exhausted and ready for bed. The room felt so neglected that it was unusable, and we left the hotel 30 minutes later. Dust covered everything, thickly: walls, carpets, lamps, all of it. It wasn’t just a little dust from a day or two. Within minutes we were both coughing, sneezing, and itching. Then the smell hit. I’ve never come across anything like it in a hotel: stale sweat, strong unwashed-feet odour, and a heavy stink of too many people in a room that hadn’t been aired or cleaned properly for years, maybe decades. It seemed to cling to our clothes. We felt physically sickened and were still talking about it and heaving at the thought hours later. The room was extremely hot, with no air con. The window opened barely an inch and its frame was mouldy. The curtains came off when we tried to open them, the light card failed repeatedly and left us in darkness, and someone else’s used towel was in the bathroom. There were no clean towels, the beds smelled unclean, and bags of hotel laundry were piled up in the corridor. The young man at reception did try to help. He checked for a room in the newer building next door, but it was fully booked. If we’d known we might be put in a room like this, in what felt like an overflow outhouse, we’d never have booked. The clearest measure of how bad it was: close to midnight, after travelling since 8am across Europe by bus, train, and plane, we got back in the car and drove 2.5 hours home to Cornwall, arriving at 2:30am. We decided a night drive while exhausted was better than one more minute in that room. At one point we wondered whether a police cell might be cleaner. I’m still not sure the answer is no. Avoid.