Hotel chains in England

England has Hilton hotels, Hampton Inn and Doubletree (in the Hilton group), and Best Western, all of which are familiar to us in the U.S.
Marriott, Radisson and Holiday Inn can also be found there.

We like the Premier Inn hotels in England. Good price, no frills but clean rooms & baths and comfy clean beds.
A couple of clicks down in quality and price is Travelodge.

Premier Inn and Travelodge are the most common budget chain hotels in England. I have also stayed in Ibis and Thistle hotels in London - they are OK depending on where you prefer to stay.

Edit: Also stayed one night at a Best Western in October 2016 in a popular seaside town where our room was definitely more "tired" (not charming!) than the standards of Best Western in Canada. The breakfast, however, was excellent and they were able to accommodate husband's requirement for gluten-free (celiac) food. Staff were excellent.

I've stayed in Premier Inns twice and each time my room was great and the staff very nice. Each hotel had obviously been recently renovated. And they're remarkably cheap rooms!

A friend who stays in Premier Inns regularly says that the quality of the facilities can be hit or miss, depending on how recently they renovated. She's stayed in some fairly "tired" rooms.

I'd pay close attention to Yelp reviews for the specific Premier Inn you're considering.

Another vote for Premier Inns if you choose carefully! I found them to be a reliable standard. No charm, but no headaches either.

Is there a particular reason you want chain hotels? You will miss all the pleasure of staying at small local inns, whether boutique style or quirky.

I would agree with Lola, chain hotels are all well and good in their place, which is one night stays when you are passing through, and in big cities. But if you are doing any serious touring you want the local non-chain hotels and pubs. That would get you much more interesting locations and probably better food.
I recommend anything that is not a chain hotel.

I like Premier Inn and have stayed in several around England. Agreed, some are a little more "tired" than others, but if you're traveling and concerned with where you're going to sleep the next night, they're a good bet. The staff have always been friendly and helpful and easy to work with...even when you show up 5 hours before check in with 9 pieces of luggage. As for the food: Our last PI was Borough Market and the restaurant is The Anchor. A great pub with an interesting history. It also gets a lot of local customers. At no PI are you not obligated to eat in the restaurant, though you do get a bit of a breakfast deal. A more remote PI, in our case Helston in Cornwall, the restaurant might be your only nearby choice for breakfast.

You may also want to look at Best Westerns. Many of which are a tad more upscale than their American highway counterparts. (e.g., BW Mornington, Delmere, Swiss Cottage, etc.)

If you are travelling all over England, you will be able to experience some more interesting hotels and B&Bs rather than identikit, bland chain hotels.

Look at booking.com and smoothhound.co.uk and sawdays.co.uk for options.

We have stayed in many Premier Inns and have really liked them. Have found the rooms to be clean and larger than some. We had always stayed in B&B's until my mother got up in age, and I was never quite sure whether I would have to cancel. With the Premier Inns we have stayed in, we would have been able to cancel with no penalty, so I went with that. Now I've been able to schedule some very nice places through Booking.com that also have good cancellation policies. One thing about some of the Premier Inns in the countryside is that they are not located right in the town - worked for us because we had a car.

People are talking about the food at Premier Inns. I've stayed at several, but never once have eaten at one -- well, true one morning I had breakfast with my dad downstairs, but while in Glasgow, for example, we went further downtown "off campus" and had breakfast each morning we were there.

Sometimes you just want something predictable and safe -- one person's "charming" can often be the other person's "quirky." And sometimes we can't afford to spend all our nights in nicer places. When we went to Scotland last summer, staying in the Premier Inns at three of our destinations (one for only one night) allowed us to splash out a bit more with special stays at unique local places when at our two other locations. That mix worked for us. Would I like to stay at a charming, elegant place all the time? Sure! Do I have the money to do so? No.

I think reliable chains have their place, and it doesn't make one a bad traveler to find them suitable!!!

I don't mean to imply that one who seeks chain hotels is a "bad traveler"---they certainly have their place, especially in London where affordable accommodations are hard to find. Or when one has hotel points to use.

But as a steady diet they seem a bit bland. Why travel all the way to England to stay in cookie-cutter hotels that mimic US chains? Is predictability so important? Isn't one of the reasons we all travel the joy of experiencing new things? The choice of chains cannot be all about price---through a bit of research have found small B and B's that are as affordable as the chains, and actually much nicer. And we enjoy the opportunity to talk to the innkeepers.

Different strokes for different folks. Does checking your bags on your flight mean you're wrong? Does packing along a 25 inch suitcase make you wrong? No. Just different. Same with choosing chain hotels like Premier Inn, Hilton, or any number of others.

We like nothing better than staying in family run hotels or B&Bs. On our upcoming trip we'll stay at a Chateau, a Palazzo, a 17th century mansion, and an Alpine ferienvenung. But we'll also stay at a Premier Inn because of its proximity to St Pancras/Kings Cross and at a Mercure in Munich for its location and price. Some folks get enough local immersion during the day and evening. But they prefer the certainty of a comfortable night that can come from a chain hotel. That's OK too, IMO.

Note that Holiday Inn is a part of IHG, a British company.

Also: chain hotels in the U.K. don't really mimic US hotels, they are constructed using the same goals and just end up similar looking.

Best Western isn't a brand, it is a franchise the hotel owner purchases and pays for the branding, provided it meets the minimum standards of the chain. Best Western has a number of classes a hotel may qualify for.

I like to stay at Premier Inn while in London, they are centrally located, the rooms are typically spacious compared to others in the price range and you know the room will be clean. Hotel review sites will have hundreds of positive reviews for the chain. It isn't the Ritz, but I like wearing jeans, so, I guess I won't be going to the Ritz.

Personally, the hotel is a place to sleep and hold my clothes while I am out experiencing my destination.

Read reviews, don't trust the pictures on the hotel's website. You can do some pretty amazing things with forced perspective these days.

I've stayed at the Premier County Hall and it was fine. Very centrally located and you can't get lose since it is right next to the London Eye. A good budget hotel. (Stay away from the restaurant, however. I thought the food there was sub-par.)

Ibis, the budget branch of the Accor hotel group, is present in the UK and operates on a no-surprises basis. In other words, every hotel room is more or less identical and the operation is very efficient. Accor, biggest chain in Europe by some measures, has brands at various price levels.

I've also had positive experiences with Premier Inn locations in England and Ireland. In London they have many locations to choose from and the beds at each have been comfortable. Have a great trip!

We recently returned from the UK and stayed in Premier Inns in Portsmouth, Cardiff, and Cirencester and a Holiday Inn near Salisbury. We loved the Premier Inns. Friendly staff willing to give restaurant recommendations, directions, print off emails, and store luggage. Clean, sensibly organized rooms with cable tvs and loads of hot water. We loved driving around the countryside and enjoying local culture. And at night, we enjoyed reliable wifi, quirky British programming, and double glazed windows for a sound sleep. Nothing wrong with that in my book!

I've had good luck with both Premier Inn and Ibis Styles in the UK. I'm one that doesn't want quirky or charming when I'm visiting, I like knowing that a hotel has their own maintenance staff and I'm free to come and go when I want with no questions asked.

Premier inn also has a few Hub hotels, which I like. They're small rooms, basically pods, but they work well for a single traveler and can be easy on the budget in London. Accor Hotels has quite a few brands. I've stayed at Ibis Styles in Liverpool, which I quite liked. It had a 60s Beatles Psychedelia theme. I also stayed at the Novotel in Manchester, another Accor brand. It was fine, but was a large business hotel.