Kidderminster - Premier Inn
Slingfield Mill, Weavers Wharf, Kidderminster DY10 1AA
April 2022
Years ago, Kidderminster was a ‘car’ town. Many of the middle-aged residents were long-serving skilled or managerial employees at Longbridge, a town synonymous with strikes, and ‘friday’ cars that didn’t start, had bumpers that fell off or doors that didn’t shut properly. There was a culture, perhaps, that the employees knew best, that they have a job for life making products and providing services to a quality that they deemed to be sufficient. Twenty odd years ago that resulted in Longbridge closing; it's now a huge supermarket.
But attitudes persist, and Kidderminster clearly has a problem. We chose to stay at the PI following our experiences at the other once-decent hotel in town (see my blog entry from February 2022). On our next trip we’ll be staying in Bewdley or Stourport, for we’ve given up on Kidder.
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Our stay was for two nights, on a mini-tour, after a night’s stop in the PI in Bicester, which is on the outskirts of the town, unlike the Kidderminster one in an old mill in the town centre. The contrast between the two PIs was significant. At Bicester the taxi had been able to drop us off outside the entrance, but there is no drop-off zone at Kidder; also I don’t recall having any concerns over cleanliness of the entrance at Bicester, but at Kidderminster the dingy entrance door, and the surrounding pavement, was splattered with pigeon poo. This sort of thing is surely a sign of an organisation that doesn’t quite understand what customers want, or, indeed, what is hygienic. So much for ‘CleanProtect’.
Reception was up on the 4th floor, of the two lifts one apparently ran at normal speeds but the other took ages. I don’t recall this being the case on previous visits. Check-in was ok, a little confused, although I still haven’t received the email invoice that I was supposed to have been sent. I was, however, not inspired by being told that they were not servicing rooms ‘due to covid’; sorry, but if you work in hospitality, you should expect to encounter members of the public who might have illnesses…. and if you are under 60, and fit, covid poses little risk to you).
Despite there being two of us we were only given one room key - the receptionist clearly not aware of the problems caused if one of a couple goes out to the shops while the other wants to stay in the room, where the lights go out when the key is removed from the holder!
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Our room was spacious, something I do like about PIs, but it featured the now-standard PI heating/air con and the window didn’t open. (This was probably a good thing in some respects because of the pigeons, but I like fresh air, and PI should deal with their obvious pest problem and clean their windows.) It had been prepared, was reasonably clean, but some details had escaped attention - most notably, the loo cistern refilled at a snail’s pace, meaning it could only be flushed once every half hour. (I did complain about this on the first morning of our stay, and was told it would be fixed ‘if you’re happy for us to enter your room’. I told them I was, but it wasn’t.)
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The basics of the room were up to the PI standard, but the TV was disappointing - an old, small, screen, fixed high up on a shelf unit and disappointing after the one we’d had in Bicester, for it didn’t get all channels (I couldn't get GBNews). Despite the lack of room servicing, our hospitality tray contained only four milk cartons; a trip up to reception was required to collect more. (Oddly, at reception they had the milk, tea and coffee packed together, so, anyone wanting just more milk took coffees, teas as well…. the objective of only putting out four milks being, presumably, to control costs by restricting the numbers of sachets taken home by guests, I don’t understand why you would give coffees to someone who only wanted more milks….)
The ensuite was clean, but, in addition to the dysfunctional cistern it also featured an incorrectly calibrated shower tap (the thermostat had obviously been changed and not refitted correctly), and, on our final morning, the rollover plug in the washbasin jammed, and we could let water out of it. I have to say that I believe that room servicing standards were inadequate, and some of these points might have been picked up if the room was serviced daily in the traditional fashion.
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In the past we have avoided taking breakfast in the PI, choosing Gregg’s or Costa nearby, but this time we did opt for the PI offering. We now regret that and realise why we went elsewhere: the PI staff are clearly not well enough trained to manage the challenges of families around busy buffet serveries. Unlike at Bicester, guests were not required to book a time slot for breakfast.
The first morning - a Sunday - wasn’t too bad, it was quiet. Cereals were rather as at Bicester, mostly dispensed from cylinders, but they did have sealed packs of Weetabix. There was, however, no full fat milk available (which, believe it or not, is more healthy for you than semi-skimmed), and - at 8.20 with breakfast still open for over another hour and a half - the fruit salad was all gone.
It was at breakfast on the Monday that the inexperience of the team at the Kidder PI really showed itself. For a Sunday night, the hotel was busy - unusually, I thought, because business travellers tend to stay Monday to Thursday nights; moreover, it was busy with families. There were several multigenerational groups, rather as one might expect in a budget hotel on the Costa Blanca, with excited children, disinterested parents, and bemused grandparents. At least one thirty-ish woman was wandering the corridors in her pyjamas at eleven in the morning.
We arrived at breakfast and the restaurant was perhaps half full, with a couple of these family groups sitting at adjacent tables. The staff told us to sit wherever we’d like to. Viv having a few minor disabilities (and wearing a badge to that effect), I didn’t want her sitting too near children, nor too close to a buffet area where hot things might be being dispensed, so we chose a table for two in the middle of a group of four. Within a minute we were surrounded by the family from hell: parents sat at one end, two children between them and us, and on the end table on the other side sat granny and grandad, right next to the tea and coffee machines.
The parents told their children to help themselves, and the children also helped granny and grandad; how nobody was scolded is beyond me. There were signs on and above the coffee machines saying ‘this machine is for grown ups only’ but has no one told PI that young children like to do grown up things, and it should have been obvious to the staff - if there were enough of them (there was only one chap for most of the time, the was busy clearing tables and keeping his head down) that the parents would have been the sort that would have said ‘she’s alright doing that’ even if their daughter happened to be carrying a pot of boiling water. Also, the signs were high up, from the eyes of a ten year old they would have been hidden behind the machines!
I told Viv, loudly and quite deliberately so as to attempt to draw attention to her badge, that I would get her food. The fruit salad was all gone, I managed to find a yoghurt for her and one of the few croissants left.
For me, I looked for Weetabix; there was none. I wasn’t going to take my chances with the loose cereals, who knows how many hands might have had contact with them. A pain au choc looked tempting: there were two left, until a boy, around ten I think, stuck his hand into the basket and felt both before deciding which he would like. His mother (I assume; at least, she was a lady supervising him) was right beside him at the time, and there were tongs provided, which they went unused.
That little boy might have recently gone to the toilet and not washed his hands, or possibly placed his clean hands on a surface (chair?) where faecal matter had been deposited by someone’s shoes…. an efficient way to spread something like norovirus, perhaps, or salmonella, which can arise in pigeon droppings, I believe. Like Coronavirus, food poisoning can kill the elderly and vulnerable; remember ‘Don’t kill granny’? There were plenty of opportunities to at the Kidderminster PI that morning.
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For the price, and with all the boasting about ‘CleanProtect’, Premier Inn guests are surely entitled to expect measures to be in place to minimise all hygiene risks, not just covid, in the restaurant as well as in the rooms. Far better measures should surely have been in place in the restaurant that Monday, including perhaps
A booking system for breakfast, as at Bicester
An area in the restaurant for families, and one for those who want a quieter time
A rule in place that all buffet areas - hot and cold - were to be approached by adults only (PI could be liable if a child injured (scalded or burned) themselves, or others, using or accessing the toaster, coffee machine, etc.)
A staff member supervising the buffet area to ensure that tongs were used and that children did not approach the area
These measures could have been explained to guests when they were welcomed into the restaurant for breakfast.
As it was, on that day, for over nine pounds I expected to have a filling, relaxing breakfast. Instead I ate only what I trusted and got out of there quickly: in terms of value it was poor. I wish they hadn’t closed the ‘spoons in Kidder.
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I won’t stay at the Kidder PI again. Ever. On leaving I read a sign in the lift asking guests to review the establishment on Tripadvisor; I don’t usually post on TA, for too many of the reviews seem to be done by people with little industry experience, but I have done this time: they got one star. Next time it’ll be Bewdley or Stourport, and the taxi I use to get from there to Kidder won’t have been made at Longbridge.
A booking system for breakfast, as at Bicester
An area in the restaurant for families, and one for those who want a quieter time
A rule in place that all buffet areas - hot and cold - were to be approached by adults only (PI could be liable if a child injured (scalded or burned) themselves, or others, using or accessing the toaster, coffee machine, etc.)
A staff member supervising the buffet area to ensure that tongs were used and that children did not approach the area
