AN INSPECTOR CALLS

His mission: To test hotel hospitality to the limit

NO WONDER more and more hotels are springing up at Gatwick Airport. Flights get earlier, and a record number of them are crammed into the busy morning period.

Ours takes off at 6.40am, which means getting to the airport about 5am. That would require leaving London at 4am — with an alarm for 3.30am.

Or you check into the Premier Inn at the North Terminal — a hideous building that is heaving on a Friday night, with ten-minute queues to get a lift to the reception area. After checking rates elsewhere, this is our cheapest option. We’re paying £87 room only.

The idea is to get there at around 9pm and go straight to bed. But we can’t quite resist a glass of vino and a couple of Caesar salads in Thyme, Premier Inn’s restaurant. The wine’s fine, the salads are far too salty.

But you could not wish for a more upbeat atmosphere, because within a few hours we’ll all be hopping on a plane and getting the heck out of here.

All we need now is a comfortable bed in a clean room with mega sound- proofing. And that’s what we get. Yes, a bottle of water would be nice and the soap dispensers attached to the bathroom wall are dispiriting, but no one is pretending that a Premier Inn is ‘home from home’.

We’re ready to go just before 5am with a short amble to the terminal. No worries about congestion on the M23.

And I dare say that if we had booked months in advance, we could have got that price down significantly.

Premier Inn Gatwick North Northway, West Sussex RH6 OPH Doubles from £56, premierinn.com