Travelodge bets on convenience stores to spur £130m budget hotel expansion
E-TILLS ARE RINGING FOR CYBER MONDAY
TRAVELODGE has joined forces with Waitrose, the supermarket chain, to build three mixed use hotel and retail sites in a £27m scheme.
The budget hotel chain said yesterday that it is also looking at 25 other sites next to big supermarkets in a £130m expansion that is expected to create about 600 jobs.
The local corner shop market has become a battleground for Britain’s supermarket giants as they try to build up their positions in a still fragmented part of the market.
Guy Parsons, Travelodge chief executive said: “To fuel our development programme we have capitalised on the UK’s supermarkets expansion plans; by co-developing a hotel on top of a Metro-style store.”
“The reason we work so well with supermarkets from a development perspective is the ease in which a hotel and ground-floor supermarket can be built. They are also able to attract finance relatively easily, even in this difficult environment,” he added.
The company will build three holtels next to Waitrose outlets in Sidcup in Kent, Vauxhall, south London and Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, which are due to open in the course of next year.
So far this year, Travelodge, which operates over 490 hotels across the UK, Ireland and Spain, has opened a site with Tesco in North London and Morrisons in Manchester.