The Customer Service Blog has featured several articles about Britannia Hotels and their terrible reputation with the British public. Readers of this blog will already know that Britannia are often ranked as the worst chain in the UK by the public. This has been confirmed yet again in a survey by Which? magazine, that has named them the worst hotel chain in the UK for the eleventh year running!!
After surveying around 5,000 people, the Which? annual ranking of British hotel chains has once again placed them at the very bottom of the list. The chain, which operates 63 hotels across the UK, had an overall customer score of just 48%. It scored a dismal 2 out of 5 stars for categories including cleanliness, bed comfort, value for money and communal areas, and only one star for bedrooms, bathrooms and wi-fi.
Despite owning some very impressive
Grade II-listed buildings, over the last decade Britannia has been unable to reverse
its appalling reputation amongst the public.
What do the Public Say?
Customers who reviewed their
experiences at a Britannia Hotel on TrustPilot have reported deteriorating
buildings, damp walls, rude staff, broken air-conditioning and stains on
carpets.
After a stay at the Manchester hotel,
one reviewer complained of: “Food remains under the bed with thick dust, sticky
coffee residue on bedside table, mirrors splattered with dirt, blood splatters
on the bathroom wall, pubic hair in the bath, dirt around the sink, dirty
coffee cups and teaspoons.”
There are hundreds of similar reviews on Tripadvisor and various other review sites.
What about other hotel chains?
Hotel Indigo and Premier Inn Hub came top in the Which? survey. Both earned customer scores of 77%, including 5 out of 5 for
cleanliness, and 4 out of 5 for value for money. Premier Inn (the sister chain of
Premier Inn Hub) came next in the table with a score of 75%. The pub chain JD Wetherspoon (which has a selection of hotels in addition to its pubs) also did well in the survey with a score
of 73%.
But at the other end of the scale, Travelodge
and Mercure fared badly in the survey, each getting a customer score of only 56%.
It needs to be pointed out that price
was only taken into account in terms of “value for money”. This means that some
of the hotels near the bottom of the list (such as Travelodge) did have much
lower prices than some of the hotels higher up the table.
However, it is interesting to note
that some of the hotels near the bottom of the table (such as Mercure, Novotel, and Macdonald Hotels) had some of the highest average prices in the survey, proving
that higher prices don’t always translate into better quality or higher customer
satisfaction.
The Survey Results
This table is based on a survey of 4,611 Which? members and the general public, taken in July 2023. The score given is calculated using a combination of factors including overall customer satisfaction and the customer’s likelihood of recommending the hotel chain.
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