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Travelodge turns 25!
Travelodge was founded in 1985
We love to celebrate special birthdays and occasions on this blog, as shown recently with features on the Goring’s 100th and Carnaby Street’s 50th. So it is a pleasure to remind ourselves once again that this year marks a quarter century for the fast-expanding budget chain, Travelodge.
The company was established in 1985 from very humble beginnings. In fact, it was seen purely as an adjunct to Little Chef restaurants, which were designed to feed hungry motorway travellers as they traversed Britain.
It took more than a decade for the company to open its first city centre hotel in Birmingham but by 2000 it had opened its 200th hotel in total.
It’s hard to believe that the 400th Travelodge in Waterloo was recently unveiled and the company plans to open a further 18 in London alone by 2012. Though it is currently in an argument with Premier Inn (an all too frequent occurrence!) over which is the biggest hotel chain in London.
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The recently-opened Travelodge Waterloo still has that "new" smell in an excellent location near the South Bank's varied cultural attractions
What cannot be denied though is that Travelodge thrives on growth and on 2nd December 2005 even managed to open 8 new hotels in a single day!
What has fuelled this expansion?
It’s partly down to a sea-change in mentality by consumers who have embraced both low-cost airlines and hotels with enthusiasm. Even though it’s fair to say that prices have been creeping up in recent times.
But as we’ve commented before, Travelodge deserves some credit for consistently executing its product at low prices with frequent promotions.
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Travelodge focuses very much on getting the basics right with few unnecessary frills
In fact, some of its promotions (you can sign up to the Travelodge email list to be notified of them) succeed in selling a room every second!
The company is not perfect and occasionally gets outdone by rival Premier Inn (which is the best budget hotel chain by the way?); plus we don’t like the hotel WiFi charges imposed by either company. There are after all decent budget chains in France and Germany which provide free WiFi.
But Travelodge has definitely raised standards in the cheap London hotel market and made it much harder for more mediocre budget hotels to survive. This can only be good news for consumers. And for that reason, we congratulate Travelodge and wish it a further happy 25 years!
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