Nigel
A Cold Room, a Cold Shower and a Flooded Bathroom. This is Not 4 Star
We stayed at the holiday Inn in Brighton mid September 2026. Due to my wife’s condition we requested an accessible room. When we got into the room, we got an immediate impression that it was a bit tired. The curtains hung badly and the carpet looked well used. The bathroom on the other hand looked very new and hardly used, but it was immediately obvious that there was no shelf spaces to put your stuff. In fact there was no horizontal surfaces at all. This makes it very difficult for ladies, who usually have many more things than men to use in the bathroom. We are sure the bathroom was not designed by anyone who actually used one. Also there were no biscuits with the complementary tea and coffee. I asked the reception about this and was told only the premium rooms get biscuits. Come on Holiday Inn this is really penny pinching. We have stayed at Travelodge at half the price and got biscuits. A small thing, but it gives the wrong impression when you first arrive. On the other hand, the room was reasonably spacious and the bed very comfortable. In the evening the room started to get cold and as my wife feels the cold, I tried to put the heating on, but it was dead. I called the reception and was told the air conditioning/heating over the whole hotel was switched off due to the work being carried out on the 4th floor. We were not told about this when we booked so we had 2 nights feeling cold. The second shock came in the morning, when went to take a shower. There was no hot water, the shower only got a bit tepid and this was after letting the water run for some time. (Not a good thing for water conservation when half the country is on a hosepipe ban) The other problem with the shower was that the drain in the floor could not get rid of the water fast enough and after only a few minutes, the whole room was flooded. Bearing in mind the accessible rooms are usually used by people who may be unsteady on their feet, a flooded bathroom is not a good idea. We drove to Brighton so we used the hotel’s underground car park. Parking in Brighton is very expensive. You drive in, turn left and are confronted by steel gates, which open when you press the green button and get a ticket. The car park is probably not the best underground car park we have used. It’s poorly lit with a very low ceiling and the layout of parking spaces with a lot of concrete pillars in between is haphazard to say the least and some care has to be taken when parking to avoid damaging your car. It’s probably secure, although anyone could get down there via the hotel lobby secure, but it does give a first impression of being old, dark, a bit claustrophobic and intimidating. A good coat of white paint would improve it considerably. We did have difficulty in leaving the car park at the end of our stay, but there is a button to press to get help. Summing up, Our stay at the Holiday Inn in Brighton was well below expectations. We thought being a hotel on the seafront in a major south coast town would be much better, but we unfortunately very disappointed. It’s supposed to be a 4 star hotel, but our impression is that it needs a lot of improvement to get to this standard.