UK’s Premier Inn is set to launch a new hotel chain with cheaper compact rooms in major UK city centres including London and Edinburgh.
The ‘hub by Premier Inn’ (‘Hub’) will appeal to people who value price, location and design over space, said parent company, Whitbread.
The ‘Hub’ will offer its customers one of the most high-tech and space-efficient rooms currently available in the UK. ‘Hub’ bedrooms will be 11.4 square meters with a desk that folds into the bed, luggage storage under the bed, an en suite bathroom with power shower and wardrobe, free wi-fi and a 40-inch smart screen TV. Rooms will cost 25 to 30 percent less than current Premier Inn rates.
The ‘Hub’ will be the UK’s first hotel chain where the rooms can be remote controlled using a smart phone app. Guests will be able to check in online and then control the room’s lighting, temperature and also operate the TV or radio using their phone. Each hotel will have its own deli-style restaurant and guests will be able to pre-order breakfast using the Hub app.
‘Hub is all about giving customers more choice. It will provide great quality, contemporary room design in the heart of a major city at an outstanding price,’ says Patrick Dempsey, managing director of hotel group Whitbread.
‘With space at a premium, each aspect of the design has been aimed at optimising every single centimetre of space from the desk that folds up and disappears into the bed to a convenient under the bed space for luggage,’ he added.
The first 167-room ‘hub by Premier Inn’ is scheduled to open on St Martin’s Lane in London by mid 2014. Three more central London properties will then follow in 2015, and another in 2016. Whitbread is looking for around 40 Hub by Premier Inn hotels opened or in the pipeline by 2018.
