I'd wondered whether the standard Premier Inn experience would survive Thurso... now I know. Arriving for check-in, one of the two self-check in machines was marked as out of order, so a member of staff was telling guests to use the other one... which was also out of order. That left the one member of staff on reception struggling to sort out guests who had been partially checked in but had no room keys. The receptionist's frustration was pretty evident. After finally checking in, we went to the restaurant for dinner, but were turned away. Despite the restaurant being less than half full, we were told there were no more meals being served because "there's only one chef working". This was obviously a fairly regular occurrence because there was a bundle of leaflets at reception with the numbers of all the local takeaways, and when I got back to the hotel with a takeaway I didn't get past "Can I have..." before being handed plates and cutlery. The room itself was typical of Premier Inn - a comfortable bed and clean. Except it was freezing cold because the air conditioning was flashing an error and pumping out cold air. At 9pm I went to reception to ask if it could be fixed. I was told the heating had blown for the whole hotel and they were trying to get hold of the manager for the code to reset it. They 'hoped' to have the code before their shift ended at 11pm. 10:55pm I went back to reception to check on progress. I was told that the system had been reset and would start heating the rooms again shortly. It came back on at 9am (presumably when the manager arrived with the fabled code).
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