HOTEL REVIEW – Accor Hotels Formule One Hotel – Perth Airport

I stayed at the Formula One Hotel Perth Airport once before and thought it was okay. I have also stayed nearby at a little more expensive motel, but decided to save and go with the cheaper Formula One again in January 2010. After this last time though, I will never stay there again!

I flew in with Virgin Blue in the early evening - a Trip Report can be found HERE - and picked up my hire car and drove to the Hotel where parking is free and there is ample room to find a carpark.

On the previous occasion, I arrived into Perth about 9pm to find the reception closed – there is no 24 hour reception here! There is a machine outside the locked door that, with a swipe of the credit card used to prepay the booking, you are issued with your room key which will also access the building.

I arrived earlier this time and found reception still open, so received my room key from the girl behind the counter.

The problem came when I entered the room – there was a fairly strong odour – like a public toilet – and much to my surprise an automatic room deodoriser that sprayed air freshener every couple of minutes – essentially I felt like I was staying in a public toilet!

I also found that the window in the room did not seal properly, and being in the middle of a hot dry Summer (January), the draft that came in through the unsealed window was quite warm and meant the air conditioning didn’t really have much effect on the room (pictured below). To make matters even worse, the TV could not be used properly as the remote control batteries were dead, and the buttons on the TV are almost inaccessible due to the security measures used by this Hotel chain in their rooms.


Reception couldn’t or didn’t want to help – I was told there were no other rooms available – the hotel was full – this was probably the truth as these hotels are usually pretty busy. The girl couldn’t even find batteries for the remote control!!

Overall, I was not impressed. I had the feeling the room had not been used for a while and had been badly soiled by a previous guest. While appearing to be clean, the room did have a strong odour about it, and as mentioned some facilities were not up to scratch.