The UK’s leading budget hotel chain, Travelodge, has today announced that it is expanding into the conference & meeting room market. It is introducing bespoke meeting rooms in 60 of its hotels across the country this year.
With meeting rooms available for just £200*, including free breakfast, the new service by Travelodge is positioned to be the best value meeting room proposition in the marketplace.
The budget style meeting rooms have been designed to fulfil a range of business communication requirements from generic business meetings to larger scale conferences. The capacities vary from accommodating meetings for eight people right up to conference-style events for 150 delegates.
The meeting rooms are initially being trialled in three London flagship hotels which includes Covent Garden, Waterloo and City Road before the programme is rolled out across the UK.
Grant Hearn, Travelodge CEO said: “Despite today’s focus on social media, businesses still recognise the value of a good old fashioned face-to-face meeting. However trying to find inexpensive meeting space can be a challenge for businesses, especially in major UK city centres. Therefore to support our business customer base, which has doubled in terms of growth and revenue within the last 12 months, we are launching a new meeting room service in 60 of our hotels.
“Our meeting rooms have been designed in line with our room product, so that they offer everything you need to run an effective meeting at a great value price.”
Since the double dip recession started, Travelodge has experienced a surge of new business travellers bedding down in its hotels across the UK. This influx of new business in the era of austerity has helped Travelodge to double its business travel revenues and its corporate customer portfolio. Last year, Travelodge welcomed over 3,500 new corporate customers to its brand.
The public and private sector made a significant contribution to Travelodge’s corporate travel business growth last year, responding to tighter travel budgets.
The industries in the private sector contributing most to Travelodge’s corporate travel business growth are: construction, retail, transport and telecoms.
Clients include well-known FTSE 100 companies, high street banks, blue chip brands and Government departments.
Grant Hearn said: “2012 was a record year for our corporate travel business; we doubled our portfolio and revenues. We are expecting this growth drive to continue into this year, as our new corporate website is currently receiving 30% more bookings year on year and we are receiving around 1,000 new business customer leads every week which is a 22% increase on the same period last year. We are expecting business customers to spend over seven million nights with us this year, which is an average of 20,000 business stays per night. In contrast back in 2007, at the start of the recession, we had three million business stays for the year”.
To book a Travelodge meeting room just visit www.travelodge.co.uk/business.
In addition to launching the new meeting room service, Travelodge has also:
Trebled its investment in its corporate travel business team in the past 12 months, and developed a bespoke service for business customers with the introduction of dedicated relationship managers.
Announced a £223 million brand investment which includes a major focus on business travellers. A key element of this investment is the £57 million refurbishment programme across the estate. In addition to offering more comfort, style and quality, the new room features the Travelodge Dreamer, a new luxury king size bed deemed in the industry as the ‘Rolls Royce’ of beds. A relaxing, sleep inducing colour scheme, as well as a larger desk area, new reading lights and a phone charging socket built into the bed frame.
Launched a new ‘Business Account Card’, the only business card on the market that gives cardholders a 5% discount on their flexible rate bookings as standard. No other budget hotel chain does this. To support the new business card, Travelodge has updated its corporate website (https://www.travelodge.co.uk/business/index.php) to feature a dashboard which allows customers to find the information they need, and rebook frequently used hotels much faster, as well as adding a corporate rate to their search results.
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Notes to Editors
For further information please contact:
Travelodge Press Office: 01844 35 8703
* Daily delegate rate of £25 based on minimum occupancy of eight delegates.
About Travelodge:
The first budget hotel brand to launch in the UK in 1985, Travelodge now operates over 500 hotels and 37,000 rooms across the UK, Ireland and Spain. More than 16.5 million people stayed with Travelodge last year and 90% of reservations are currently made online at www.travelodge.co.uk, which is the UK’s most visited hotel website, attracting over 1.1 million visits each week.
Travelodge is benefitting from a £223 million brand investment this year, which includes a £57m refurbishment programme across its estate and a brand new room concept created by Travelodge customers. This programme kicked off on the 4th March 2013 and will be completed in autumn 2014.
In addition to offering more comfort, style and quality, the new room features the Travelodge Dreamer, a new luxury king size bed deemed in the industry as the ‘Rolls Royce’ of beds.