What's going on with Premier Inn prices?

Pawnless Endgame · 18 Jan 2023 at 16:10

Disclaimers, to make this thread fair:
- I always use the same Premier Inn branch, called Nottingham Arena
- I always book via their web site (links below)
- All prices here are exclusive of breakfast or any other extras

I stayed there every October for the Nottingham Goose Fair and it was always £40-£50 per night for 1 person, although it's always a double or twin room. This was up until 2019.

The pandemic hit so everything was closed in 2020.

In 2021, Nottingham Goose Fair didn't go ahead but Hull Fair did, so I booked a nearby independent hotel there and again it was only £43 per night for 1 person. In 2022, I went back to Hull, same hotel, now £55 a night. That's a slight hike but I could live with that due to energy rates going up and the entertainment industry clawing back money that was lost during the pandemic.

Now I want to go back to Nottingham Arena (Premier Inn), this time on 28th-30th April and 6th-8th October.

For the October dates, they want £136-£159 per night

Nottingham Arena (London Road) Hotels | Premier Inn

Our Premier Inn Nottingham Arena (London Road) hotel is close to some of Nottingham?s top attractions, from the Motorpoint Arena Nottingham to the City of Caves and more.

www.premierinn.com

For the April dates, they want £151-£174 per night!

Nottingham Arena (London Road) Hotels | Premier Inn

Our Premier Inn Nottingham Arena (London Road) hotel is close to some of Nottingham?s top attractions, from the Motorpoint Arena Nottingham to the City of Caves and more.

www.premierinn.com

Note that the October dates don't overlap with October half term and Easter Day this year is 9th April, so my dates don't clash with school holidays or peak times.

What the hell is going on? £20 extra is fine to cover hardships etcs, but I can't justify paying 3-4 times of what I used to pay.

ci_newman · 18 Jan 2023 at 16:16

After covid, many hotel staff realised that service work is underpaid and overworked so found jobs in new areas. Hotels are having to pay much higher salaries now to compete with a wider employment pool (also Brexit drove away a lot of the low paid / lower skilled workers).

Don't forget energy costs are almost 10x what they were for business now compared to 2019 too.

Pretty much all of the chain hotels are doing the same thing now.

richieboy · 18 Jan 2023 at 16:17

Brexit. Tories. Energy costs. Other stuff probably too. Everything is expensive and terrible now mate, get used to it.

413x · 18 Jan 2023 at 16:44

Anything with accommodation is crazy expensive now.

Its so much cheaper to go away to Europe for any type of holiday. It used to be like this but now the difference is ridiculous.

Camping at camp sites too I noticed. To the point where there is no point.

Currently looking for a cleaner.
Struggling to find a house cleaner for under 50 pounds a visit!
More than I was hoping for and more than I want to pay really. Was hoping for 35-40.

ci_newman · 18 Jan 2023 at 16:47

413x said:
Anything with accommodation is crazy expensive now.

Its so much cheaper to go away to Europe for any type of holiday. It used to be like this but now the difference is ridiculous.

Camping at camp sites too I noticed. To the point where there is no point.

That entirely depends on where you are looking for campsites.

Camping and Caravan club sites are still £20-£30 / night.

robfosters · 18 Jan 2023 at 17:05

Stealth campervan is what you need

peterwalkley · 18 Jan 2023 at 17:11

To add to the above: COVID removed some competitors thus driving up prices, whether through going bust or re-purposed such as housing the homeless.

Voltar · 18 Jan 2023 at 17:55

413x said:
Anything with accommodation is crazy expensive now.

Its so much cheaper to go away to Europe for any type of holiday. It used to be like this but now the difference is ridiculous.

Camping at camp sites too I noticed. To the point where there is no point.

Currently looking for a cleaner.
Struggling to find a house cleaner for under 50 pounds a visit!
More than I was hoping for and more than I want to pay really. Was hoping for 35-40.

£35-40 is super cheap to clean a house, I think as someone observed above people in these industries have been very underpaid for a long time.

On topic I ageee Premier is now really pricey for what you get!

jpaul · 18 Jan 2023 at 18:04

are they prioritizing dual occupancy now, where in the past they would let doubles go cheaper for one ... ring them and ask

google suggest they are increasing, but doesn't explain what you see

Premier Inn to raise room rates to combat 8% inflation

Premier Inn owner Whitbread will raise room rates to counter sector inflation of up to 8% as the hospitality industry confronts staff shortages and supply chain snags amid lingering fallout from the pandemic.

www.standard.co.uk

Semple · 18 Jan 2023 at 18:12

Pawnless Endgame said:
Disclaimers, to make this thread fair:
- I always use the same Premier Inn branch, called Nottingham Arena
- I always book via their web site (links below)
- All prices here are exclusive of breakfast or any other extras

I stayed there every October for the Nottingham Goose Fair and it was always £40-£50 per night for 1 person, although it's always a double or twin room. This was up until 2019.

The pandemic hit so everything was closed in 2020.

In 2021, Nottingham Goose Fair didn't go ahead but Hull Fair did, so I booked a nearby independent hotel there and again it was only £43 per night for 1 person. In 2022, I went back to Hull, same hotel, now £55 a night. That's a slight hike but I could live with that due to energy rates going up and the entertainment industry clawing back money that was lost during the pandemic.

Now I want to go back to Nottingham Arena (Premier Inn), this time on 28th-30th April and 6th-8th October.

For the October dates, they want £136-£159 per night

Nottingham Arena (London Road) Hotels | Premier Inn

Our Premier Inn Nottingham Arena (London Road) hotel is close to some of Nottingham?s top attractions, from the Motorpoint Arena Nottingham to the City of Caves and more.

www.premierinn.com

For the April dates, they want £151-£174 per night!

Nottingham Arena (London Road) Hotels | Premier Inn

Our Premier Inn Nottingham Arena (London Road) hotel is close to some of Nottingham?s top attractions, from the Motorpoint Arena Nottingham to the City of Caves and more.

www.premierinn.com

Note that the October dates don't overlap with October half term and Easter Day this year is 9th April, so my dates don't clash with school holidays or peak times.

What the hell is going on? £20 extra is fine to cover hardships etcs, but I can't justify paying 3-4 times of what I used to pay.

Have you looked at dates either side of the event? Assuming still outside of school term and any bank holidays etc.

It may well be that they know demand goes high due to the local event so up the prices go. It's certainly not unheard of for accomodation costs to go up when there's a local event going on that will attract visitors who aren't local.

Uther · 18 Jan 2023 at 18:14

£150-£175 a night for a Premier inn room is mental.

Feek · 18 Jan 2023 at 18:49

ci_newman said:
Caravan club

Caravan club?

THE Caravan Club?

With my more serious hat on, I’ve noticed this as well. I generally book a Premier Inn somewhere on the south coast in October and although the price hasn’t gone up anywhere near as much as mentioned earlier, it’s still had a hefty increase for the last couple of years.

wolfie138 · 18 Jan 2023 at 20:52

damn. i've always had decent prices from PI and Travelodge etc. The only time it got stupid was when they know there's a big event on so they screw their customers - i overnighted a couple times for Rammstein at Donington, and the prices were literally double for that one weekend only.

413x · 18 Jan 2023 at 21:03

Voltar said:
£35-40 is super cheap to clean a house, I think as someone observed above people in these industries have been very underpaid for a long time.

On topic I ageee Premier is now really pricey for what you get!

Its quite a lot 45+ is what I've been seeing. For a couple of hours just vacuuming and stuff. I suspect much better for a bigger house. But this is quite small.

Found somewhere for under 40 which is much more what I was hoping for.

I understand there's a fixed price per job effectively. So been hunting for someone where there isn't a middle man.

I can imagine if this cost increase is same for accommodation that's a big chunk of the increase there.

cheesefest · 18 Jan 2023 at 21:11

I have done a few days away staying at PIs - c20-30 miles radius. Route based on cheapest hotel. If stayed at the same PI for 4 nights, it would be another £150. This £150 paid for admission to tourist places, meals, any parking charges (use Parkopedia for cheapest) and petrol.

BUDFORCE · 18 Jan 2023 at 21:11

richieboy said:
Brexit. Tories. Energy costs. Other stuff probably too. Everything is expensive and terrible now mate, get used to it.

Seems to be that way.

purplesky · 18 Jan 2023 at 21:24

Worry not. If the masses start getting big pay increases, the cost of everything will go up even more. And the Bank Of England will jack those rates up even further.

Pawnless Endgame · 18 Jan 2023 at 21:27

Cheers fellas.

ci_newman said:
Don't forget energy costs are almost 10x what they were for business now compared to 2019 too.

My energy rate is 2.5 times of my fixed, but I didn't know that companies are in a separate bag and having to pay 10 times of that now.

richieboy said:
Brexit. Tories. Energy costs. Other stuff probably too. Everything is expensive and terrible now mate, get used to it.

I'm not talking about strike action (Tories) and Brexit has little impact as people still want jobs and there are a few million unemployed here. So energy is the only bit in your post that is relevant, mate.

413x said:
Currently looking for a cleaner.

Not a cleaner, but I'm having a nightmare finding local tradesmen, even gardeners! Some calls / emails go unanswered. Some do answer, fix a date then don't turn up.

peterwalkley said:
To add to the above: COVID removed some competitors thus driving up prices, whether through going bust or re-purposed such as housing the homeless.

I can still see plenty of nearby hotels about but there's little variation in the prices.

Semple said:
Have you looked at dates either side of the event? Assuming still outside of school term and any bank holidays etc.

The October dates are flexible, so if I picked week days adjacent, it drops to £111 but that is still over double of my old rate which was a weekend rate and for the same event. The April date isn't flexible though as I'm seeing PVD (club DJ) on a set night. The venue that I'm going to is only 1300 capacity at the local university, so it's not like it's an O2 / Academy setting.

Voltar said:
On topic I ageee Premier is now really pricey for what you get!

Uther said:
£150-£175 a night for a Premier inn room is mental.

Since my OP earlier today, my sister told me that she got away with paying £70/night in a London Premier Inn in mid-July to see Pulp (90s indie band) in an open air gig. I asked her how she managed this and she said that she just went via the PI web site as normal like I did.

b0rn2sk8 · 18 Jan 2023 at 21:35

I booked a premier inn room for £40 the other day for a few weeks time, not that branch mind.

It's worth remembering that hotel rooms are priced dynamically to maximise revenue, the higher the demand, the higher the price.

It will simply be the case that there is a local event that you may not be aware of causing higher than expected demand or a lot of other hotels are already full and they are seeing higher than normal demand.

I'm not wanting to get political but the home office is currently booking tens of thousands of hotel rooms up and down the country which is taking away a lot of capacity generally.

mattyprice4004 · 19 Jan 2023 at 00:50

wolfie138 said:
damn. i've always had decent prices from PI and Travelodge etc. The only time it got stupid was when they know there's a big event on so they screw their customers - i overnighted a couple times for Rammstein at Donington, and the prices were literally double for that one weekend only.

They don’t screw anyone - they use demand based pricing.
If the software sees there’s a surge in bookings (due to an event etc) it’ll creep the price up to match supply and demand.