When you book a hotel, what are you looking for? A comfy bed? A hearty breakfast? Most people just want a good night’s sleep, but even the least fussy of travellers seem to have problems with Britannia Hotels, which has just been named the country’s worst rated hotel chain for the 12th year in a row.
Every year, consumer choice site Which? undertakes a huge audit of all of Britain’s major hotel providers. It asks a panel of customer reviewers to rate each company on eight different criteria, ranging from cleanliness to quality of bathrooms to value for money, then adds in how likely people were to recommend the hotel to give each an overall score out of 100.
This year, only three of the 32 chains in the study were named ‘Which? Recommended providers’, with Premier Inn losing that seal of approval due to rising costs, but one thing remained the same: customers don’t like Britannia Hotels.
Britannia didn’t get more than two out of five stars in any category, achieving the dreaded one star rating for both cleanliness and bedrooms. Overall, it only had a 44 percent approval rating, making it the only company to have the majority of customers say they wouldn’t recommend it to a friend.
A glance at its TrustPilot and TripAdvisor ratings tells a similar story – a recent review on TrustPilot warned potential customers to ‘avoid at all costs’, while another described it as ‘without doubt the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed at’. On TripAdvisor one customer said that the overall quality of the property they stayed in was ‘completely horrendous’.
Cleanliness and reliability are the two most common complaints; one person claimed that they found chewing gum stuck in their carpet, and several people noted that their reservations were cancelled last minute this July.
However, it’s not all bad. One person who rated the Canary Wharf branch four stars argued that the hate was overblown, saying ‘honestly, it's absolutely fine! … The location is great, and food and facilities are commensurate with the price’. An average night at a Britannia Hotel will only set you back £84. Multiple other people also commented on how helpful the staff were when they had problems.
The highest-rated large chain in Which?’s study was the Coaching Inn Group, which scored 81 out of 100 and received a coveted five stars for customer service and accurate online descriptions. Everything else was four stars, so it’s no wonder the company received top marks and an official recommendation. You can find Which?’s study in full here.
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