My Premier Inn room temperature was 28 degrees: Why isn’t it covered by its Good Night Guarantee? CRANE ON THE CASE

In mid-September, I stayed three nights at the Premier Inn hotel on Euston Road in London while I attended a work event.

The room was unbearably hot. The in-room heating control said the temperature was 28 degrees. 

The window couldn’t safely be left open as I was on the first floor. I asked for a different room but there were none available.

I didn’t get more than three or four hours of sleep per night, which was not good as I paid an average of £228 per night.

Hot and bothered: Our reader stayed in a Premier Inn room similar to this one and says the temperature was 28 degrees (stock image, not the actual room)

The reception staff told me the air conditioning was broken across the whole hotel, and that they were waiting for a part to get it fixed. 

They told me to contact ‘guest relations’ and make a complaint, which I did. I thought this would be accepted as it seemed to me the temperature of the room clearly breached the Premier Inn ‘Good Night Guarantee’.

However, Premier Inn said that it didn’t apply because the hotel wasn’t advertised on the website as having air conditioning, and didn’t refund me any money.

I wasn’t complaining about the lack of air conditioning per se, but the fact the room was too hot – regardless of whether or not there was air con installed and working. Can you help? R.D, via email

Helen Crane of This is Money replies: Lying awake for hours in a boiling bedroom is not the best way to feel fresh ahead of a big work event. 

You have said you would be able to put the room on your work expenses, but as you work for a charity you would rather not waste funds on a substandard stay.

You stayed in the hotel around the time of the heatwave in mid-September, when the UK had a seven day stretch of 30 degree weather.

So you might have reasonably expected the room to be a little warm – but I agree with you that the temperature of your room in the middle of the night should not have been 28 degrees. 

That’s almost as hot as it was outside, in the middle of the day, on the hottest week of the year.

And you weren’t alone in your complaints. 

Reviews on Trip Advisor show many other hot and bothered guests at the same hotel – not only during the week of the heatwave, but also into October when the weather was cooler. 

Some say their rooms were more than 30 degrees. 

Here is some of what they said about their sweltering stays: 

‘When you opened the door to the room you were hit with a blast of hot air akin to when you open the oven door.’

‘Great if you fancy seeing what it’s like to sleep on the surface of the sun.’

‘Over priced and over cooked, I now know what a roast turkey must feel like.’

None of these things sound like a recipe for a good night’s sleep. 

Premier Inn’s Good Night Guarantee states that ‘We’re so confident you’ll have a great night’s sleep that, if you don’t, we’ll give you your money back.’

But Premier Inn’s argument was that you didn’t meet the conditions for a refund under the Good Night Guarantee. 

Bad night’s sleep: R.D says he got a maximum of four hours’ sleep per night due to the heat

The promise has a hefty list of exceptions, including not being able to complain about fire alarms, power cuts, or noisy guests that you didn’t report at the time. 

The small print also says that that guests can’t get their money back due to ‘circumstances arising from the lack of a facility at a hotel, where that facility was not included in the facility set of the hotel displayed or communicated to you when you made your booking.’

It goes on to reference air conditioning specifically: ‘For example, due to hot weather and a lack of air conditioning, you did not have a great night’s sleep, but air conditioning was not listed as a facility at that hotel in the booking process.’

You argue that you weren’t complaining about the lack of air conditioning specifically – you just don’t think that a hotel room should be 28 degrees. 

It’s to be expected that you may be slightly warmer than you’d like in a non-air-conditioned room in a heatwave – and you couldn’t in good faith claim a refund for that. 

But when it is as hot as being outside in the midday sun, I think it’s a different story.

The website you booked on didn’t say the hotel had air conditioning. But you say you were told by staff that it did – and it was broken.  

So does this hotel have air con or not? That question has proved surprisingly hard to answer.

While Premier Inn’s own website didn’t show the hotel as having in-room air conditioning, I found the hotel being advertised with air con on third-party booking sites including Trivago and Kayak.

Some reviewers of this hotel have posted pictures of a sticker on the non-opening windows saying there is a ‘constant stream of fresh air’ around the room. 

Heatwave: He stayed in the room while the weather in London was around 30 degrees – but the temperature inside was not much cooler, even late at night

You said there was a panel in your room that looked like it might be air conditioning, but that you weren’t an expert.  

Premier Inn insisted to me that it doesn’t have air conditioning, and that the staff shouldn’t have said that it was broken – as it doesn’t exist.

In the end, Premier Inn did agree to refund you for one night of your three-night stay, so you got back £219. 

Its spokesman said this was not a refund under the Good Night Guarantee because of the heat, but a goodwill gesture because of the misinformation you received about the air conditioning being broken.

And we also got an answer to the air conditioning question. 

In an email to you, a Premier Inn customer service person said that the hotel had an ‘air-cooling system, which has a lesser effect than our usual air-conditioning, therefore, it is also not advertised as part of the feature.’

They said that was why your refund was turned down under the Good Night Guarantee. 

In my opinion, Premier Inn is trying to weasel out of its obligations to pay back lots of unhappy customers with this ‘air cooling’ loophole. 

You are still not happy about this, and say that, if a 28 degree room doesn’t fall under the guarantee then it is ‘worthless’.

I’m glad you managed to claw back some of the money, but it is clearly going to take you some time to cool off.