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About Travelodge

One of the UK's leading hotel brands

Travelodge was the first budget hotel brand to launch in the UK in 1985, when it opened on the A38, in Barton under Needlewood.

Since those early days, Travelodge has undergone a radical transformation, opening more than 500 hotels (over 37,000 rooms), and moving from being a roadside hotel chain to become one of the UK's largest, fastest growing and most highly recognised budget hotel brands.

More than 16.5 million people stayed with Travelodge last year and 90% of reservations are currently made through Travelodge.co.uk which is the UK's most visited hotel website, attracting over 1.1 million visits each week.

The smart choice for hotels

Travelodge is the smart choice for leisure and business travellers, consistently offering them great value hotels in locations where they want to stay.

More than 80% of Travelodge hotels are located in major city centres, towns and popular holiday hotspots. The Travelodge brand has a range of hotel designs including: purpose built hotels, grade ll listed buildings, office conversions, acquisitions of existing hotels and co-partnerships with leading pub companies, supermarkets and retailers.

In 2013, Travelodge will open a further 14 further hotels (1,742 rooms) at an investment of £141.5 million. The UK locations include four properties in London (Bethnal Green, Hounslow, Vauxhall and Walthamstow), Liverpool, Cambridge, Aylesbury, Southport, Kings Lynn, Sittingbourne, Manchester and Chertsey. The other hotel openings in 2013 are in Barcelona and Madrid, doubling Travelodge's room stock in Spain to 700.

Investing in the brand

In January 2013, Travelodge announced that it will benefit from a £223 million investment to help further grow its business. The cash investment will help fuel growth, strengthen the Company's brand offering and ensure consumers obtain the best value in the marketplace.

A key part of the investment is a brand new room, which has been created by Travelodge customers and includes the following new features:

An upgraded new luxury king size bed (The Travelodge Dreamer) which is deemed in the industry as the 'Rolls Royce' of beds and is used predominately by luxury hotels worldwide. The bed is produced by royal warrant holders Sleepeezee Ltd who are renowned internationally for their experience and craftsmanship in producing the most luxurious beds that money can buy.

The Travelodge Dreamer boasts a 952 individual pocket sprung mattress. Each individual spring is designed to follow the natural contour of an individual's body in order to provide the correct amount of support and comfort to ensure they receive a good quality night's sleep.

For further comfort, the bed is dressed with a quilted mattress topper and bounce back duvet and pillows. A new addition to the bedding is a stylish swoosh stripes runner to help create a gift wrap feel to the bed.

The bed also features a unique benefit of housing two space saving comfy truckle beds within its base. When the beds are in use the base can be used for storing luggage, providing extra space in the room. The truckle beds have been designed to replace the traditional sofa bed and provide an enhanced service for families staying in the room.

To help create a warm and cosy ambiance in the new room, Travelodge worked with a chromotherapy expert and has introduced a sleep inducing colour palette to the room's décor.

The new Travelodge room feature wall has been painted a tranquil blue, as research shows our body clock is programmed to relate the colour blue to the hours of darkness. So when we look at the colour blue, our metabolism slows down, making us feel relaxed and sleepy.

The colour also has the effect of making a room look larger and more light and airy. The remaining walls have been painted a calming cream colour as this shade embodies the quality of gentle morning sunlight that helps you to wake up feeling refreshed and alert.

To complement the colour scheme, swoosh stripes in the colours of red, grey and blue have been incorporated into the room décor via the curtains and bed runner. Vertical stripes have been chosen due to their illusion of making a room look taller, and to create a more restful and contemporary atmosphere.

Other additions to the new room include a stylish white contemporary en-suite bathroom with a power shower, stain and water resistant carpet in a dark shade of blue, a larger desk area, new reading lights and a phone charging socket built into the bed frame. The room also includes artwork above the bed. This is an abstract design featuring relaxing sparkles and shades of blue, which customers found restful and pleasing to the eye.

In March 2013, Travelodge started a £57 million refurbishment programme to completely transform the look and feel of more than 30,000 of its rooms in just 18 months.

By the end of 2013, Travelodge plans to have refitted more than 50% of all its rooms. By autumn 2014, almost 90% of Travelodge's estate will incorporate the new room design, meaning the makeover will see an average of more than 50 rooms refurbished every single day for the next 18 months.

People

Travelodge employs over 6,000 staff in the UK, Ireland and Spain, and it is every one of these people that make the company unique.

At a time when long-term and youth unemployment are so high, Travelodge has led the way in its commitment to youth employment, and employing entry level staff through Job Centre Plus with the Local Employment Partnership (LEP).

All entry-level jobs at Travelodge are made available to the long-term unemployed thanks to this pioneering partnership, and 80% of new staff members have been recruited via this manner since its launch.

In April 2011, Travelodge launched the UK's first budget hotel management apprenticeship programme for school leavers. The scheme, JuMP (Junior Management Programme), is a fast track route into management and provides A-level students (18+) with a real alternative to going to university. On this programme school leavers can continue their education, obtain work experience, receive a salary and become a manager by the age of 21.

The programme has taken on 65 apprentices since launching two years ago and in 2013 Travelodge will create a further 51 positions on our apprenticeship programme.

Travelodge believes there should be no limit to the opportunities available for employees who wish to develop their career with the company, so we run a fast track to management programme called GEM.

This is a programme that fast tracks entry level staff to hotel management and features e-Learning at the heart of 'off job' training. The programme is available to internal employees, who go through a rigorous selection process to identify Travelodge future managers. GEM is a predecessor of our MDP programme which saw over 400 staff promoted to a management position.

Fast facts about Travelodge:

• Over 16.5 million people sleep in Travelodge hotels every year.
• The number of business customer stays at Travelodge has doubled since the start of the recession.
• Travelodge is London's biggest hotel brand, with 59 hotels (7,633 rooms) across the capital.
• Travelodge serves 2.2 million breakfasts every year.
• The most popular dish served in the Bar Café is the classic beef burger, followed by fish and chips.
• The scale of the Travelodge refurbishment programme means one million man hours will go into the refit, along with 60,000 tins of paint and 30,000 new beds – enough to cover nine football pitches.
• In 1485 King Richard III spent his last night before the battle at the Blue Boar Inn - now the site of Leicester Central Travelodge.
• Queen Victoria once stayed at Leamington Spa Travelodge in room 107 and used room 108 as a dressing room.
• Travelodge London Bethnal Green is the UK's first hotel located above a comedy club.
• In 1985, rooms were available from £24.50 and in a sign of how Travelodge has remained steadfast to its promise of keeping room prices low, rooms in our first hotel are now available from £19. With inflation rising an average of 3.5% a year over that period, rooms would start from £60.90 today if you take inflation into account.

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