Travelodge goes ‘budget-luxe’ with new design

Budget hotel brand Travelodge has announced it is planning to upgrade its core brand product to a new budget-luxe premium design.

The design has been created following the success of the group’s TravelodgePLUS format and using feedback from the company’s largest consumer study.

In response to this consumer insight, the new design will include a navy blue colour, nodding to Travelodge's original branding.

The hotels’ reception areas will be given an “elegant, classic” redesign, while a new restaurant concept called the Bar Café will offer spaces for guests to work, relax and socialise.

The redesign will also include sustainable initiatives, such as new carpets made from recycled fishing nets and old plastic bottles, as well as low energy lighting, motion sensing controls and aerated showers and taps

The group intends to roll out the new design across its UK estate and has kick-started this programme with a multi-million pound investment to upgrade 60 hotels this year in popular business and staycation destinations across the UK.

Five of these hotels will be completed this month, including three hotels in London at Southwark, Vauxhall and Wembley as well as Southampton and Thame (Oxfordshire).

Craig Bonnar, Travelodge chief executive, said: “Travelodge has been a trailblazer within the UK hotel sector since it opened the UK’s first budget hotel in 1985. Today we are once again evolving by launching a new budget-luxe premium look and feel hotel design whilst maintaining our great value price proposition.

"This is our most radical transformation to date and has been created in response to ever increasing expectations from customers. Britain is now a nation of budget travellers, with more of us choosing to stay in budget hotels than any other hotel type and thoughtful, stylish design and homely touches really matter in today’s world when staying away for business or leisure.”

Travelodge was the UK’s first budget hotel chain and opened its first hotel in 1985 on the A38 Burton under Needwood.

Today it is the UK’s second largest hotel chain, operating 593 hotels across the UK, Ireland and Spain.