Travelodge today announced the latest achievement in its ambitious expansion strategy with the opening of Wembley Travelodge, a prestigious 2006 location for the UK's number one budget hotel chain.
Working with the hotel's owners, Quintain Estates and Development PLC, Travelodge has taken a 25 year lease on the building that previously housed the 168 bed Express by Holiday Inn hotel and transformed it to Wembley Travelodge over the weekend, without closing the hotel, to ensure an uninterrupted experience for customers.
Perhaps best known as the home of football, Wembley offers a great deal to visitors with an appetite for food and specialist shopping. The area is also an ideal destination for tourists and business travellers wanting to visit central London as the hotel is only 5 miles from the West End.
Ben Roberts, Development Director, Travelodge said; "Our highly competitive pricing structure and business model will enable us to make this hotel a success. We are the only UK budget hotel operator to have such an aggressive expansion programme and this move has increased the number of London Travelodge rooms to 2000 - we added 500 rooms in the last year alone. 2006 will be a significant year for London given the opening of the new Wembley stadium."
In line with Travelodge policy, all the rooms at Wembley Travelodge (previously Express by Holiday Inn) will have non-essential and supplementary items such as hairdryers and unnecessary bathroom toiletries removed. A new low-cost pricing policy has also been introduced, meaning Travelodge will offer rooms from as little as £26 per room, per night.
Wembley Travelodge offers a choice of double, twin, family or disabled- access rooms, offering en-suite bathrooms, luxury beds, colour television with pay on demand movies, and free tea and coffee making facilities.
The new hotel has a Bar Café, offering a full English buffet breakfast - eat as much as you like for £6.50 per head (children aged ten years or under eat for free) and light meals and a licensed bar is available during the evening. Travelodge will also continue to offer the meeting room space previously available at the Express by Holiday Inn.
This newest London opening follows Travelodge's recent acquisition of Number One, City Road, London, EC1. The building, famously known as the headquarters for Singer, the sewing machine manufacturer, will reopen in 2007 as a 394 bed Travelodge.
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For more information, please contact:
Jo Begbie
Travelodge
0121 521 6624/ 07841 725 053
jo.begbie@travelodge.co.uk
Note to Editors:
About Travelodge
As the first budget hotel brand to launch in the UK in 1985, Travelodge currently has approximately 291 sites across the UK in city centres, near attractions and airports.
The latest BDRC British Hotel Guest Survey (February 2005) named Travelodge as the joint number one hotel brand in the UK (with Hilton) and the number one budget brand.
Having added 2,500 rooms to the Travelodge estate in 2005, Travelodge plans to add 2,750 rooms in 2006 and 3,000 in 2007, bringing the total number of Travelodge rooms to over 20,000.
Wembley Travelodge is the latest addition to Travelodge's London hotel locations already open including: Battersea, Covent Garden, Kings Cross, London City Airport, Docklands, Farringdon, Ilford, Ilford Gants Hill, Park Royal, Liverpool Street, Islington and Farringdon.
Travelodge launched a new pricing strategy on 1 December 2005, delivering 500,000 £26 rooms, around 100,000 £10 rooms, and further price cuts on thousands of standard rates for 2006.
The strategy produced three new, simple price bands - Supersaver (£10 room available online), Saver (£26 room available online) and Flexible (available online or by calling the Reservation Centre on 08700 850 950).