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Booking at the Premier Inn

I have a question about a reservation I have at a Premier. I booked in February and I need to book a 2nd room on the same dates. In the availability, my requested arrival date, gets changed to the day before, with departure a day early. I’ve continued to put in the correct dates, but to no avail. My departure is on a Wednesday, my my friend has to leave on a Tuesday, a day earlier. I’ve checked to see if I book the night of 23 April, and it’s available. I don’t understand why I can’t book the 19-24 April. What could be the problem?
Also, my room rate keeps dropping. I booked the Flex plan, but is there a way to get the lower rate as it drops, in case it rises again??

Posted by
4573 posts

Change web platform, ie Firefox instead of chrome....or they say the app is better. Long thread about this. Use the search function to find it. I can't search and link at the moment

Posted by
85 posts

There was a thread regarding this issue not long ago. Seems to be an issue with the Premier Inn booking site (at least when trying to book from U.S.). Per some advice on the thread, I installed the Premier Inn app on my phone & was able to book the rooms I needed for September. I'm not sure how to link a thread in my reply, but search for "Careful with Hotel Bookings (Premier Inn)" in General Europe.

Tina

Posted by
27092 posts

Yes, it was still screwed up as of a day or two ago. Neither Internet Explorer (an old version, I admit) nor Chrome (current version) worked on my desktop, though with patience, I could eventually get the date to stick. It's easier to use the app on a tablet or smartphone; not so easy for me since I don't have Wi-Fi set up at home.

I don't know that the PI rates ever drop. It think it's likelier that it just looks like they have because the dates keep moving around. If you click on the details for whichever total rate you're thinking of booking, you'll probably see wild differences from day to day. Sunday night is often really cheap. All it takes to see a noticeable difference in the rate for a given period is for the searched arrival date on one of the transactions to shift by as little as one day.

I assume that if you do encounter a price drop on a Flexible rate, the way to handle it would be to book the new/better deal and then cancel the original/costlier booking. Believe me, you don't want to try to do anything with PI except the most straightforward transactions. They do not respond to emails, nor do they seem to care that they've got a pretty disastrous issue with their online booking platform. Make it easy on yourself and them, and enjoy your stay in a nice, clean hotel at a very good rate.

Posted by
5326 posts

Might not be this at all but I wonder if it may be something to do with the different conventions as to what is the first day of the week - Monday or Sunday - inside the processing.

When I try a test I get the correct date pushed through.

Posted by
27092 posts

I can't think of any reason why it would be coded that way, but never say never where software is concerned. All parties should understand that the arrival date is the date where the hotel is located, the check-in time is for the time zone where the hotel is located, etc. So I see no reason why, if I say I want to book a room arriving on July 10 for 6 nights, the next screen shows me arriving on July 9. And if I search again for a different London hotel without changing the date, I am now shown as arriving on July 8. And so on.

It is mind-boggling that this has been allowed to go on for months.

Posted by
8364 posts

FYI , in my experience Premier Inn rates do drop from time to time. They also increase.......

Posted by
27092 posts

Good to know, Carol. I have a bunch of PI reservations for this summer. Guess I need to keep checking them. If only the website didn't make that so difficult by messing up the dates...