Case Studies | July 21, 2023

CASE STUDY: Edge-of-town, Standalone Travelodge Forming Part of Mixed-Use Scheme

Bristol, Emersons Green

4-storey, standalone, 90-room Travelodge hotel, with 90, demised, on-site car parking spaces, opened at the beginning of 2021 as part of a mixed-use, new development, co-located with a Costa drive-thru and adjacent to a proposed Greene King restaurant.


Site before development

After development – Travelodge Bristol Emersons Green. Opened 2021

 

The majority of Travelodge’s new hotels form part of new-build, mixed-use development projects, above or alongside other complementary uses, such as retail, food & beverage, coffee shops, drive-thrus, offices and even residential, as Town Planning requirements and the need to maximise value generally encourage mixed-use schemes.

In fact, the standalone units that we do take, usually in out-of-town locations, frequently form part of larger developments, for example where we sit adjacent to a pub/restaurant or a drive-through. These site often have lower residual land values, allowing different users to occupy adjacent, standalone buildings, often with some shared access arrangements and, in some cases, shared car parking. This optimisation of the site area allows more uses to be incorporated, which not only increases the total rental income and consequential end value, but also provides excellent, additional amenities for Travelodge’s customers to use and a captive customer pool from the hotel which benefits the other operators. A well-planned, mixed-use scheme can greatly assist the Town Planning process. It also allows the different elements to be sold off (or retained) as individual investment packages, thus providing great flexibility. Consequently, this is an excellent solution for all parties.

For Travelodge customers, the benefit of new openings on well-located sites on the edge of major towns or cities is the easy of access to the site from main transport links, good local amenities (both on site and in the immediate area), good car parking provision and easy accessibility to where they want to go the next day (into the city centre, or to local attractions or business locations).

Sharing a site with other operators allows us to secure the best out-of-town locations for our customer and, over the last 20 years, we have opened scores of these kinds of hotels with operators including Costa Coffee, Starbucks, Greggs, Subway, McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Greene King, Marstons, Mitchells & Butlers, Lidl and Aldi.

Having opened many hotels as part of these kinds of mixed-use schemes, we have developed a standard Lease of Part that is institutionally-acceptable and which caters for the operational issues that must be accounted for where we are sharing sites with other users. Issues to be considered include site layout and optimal design, servicing arrangements, acoustic specification and noise attenuation, hours of operation, safety and security, service charge items, the interface between different operations, customer access arrangements, car parking provision (both shared and demised) and signage. Our team has many years’ experience in considering these matters and working closely with developers’ and other operators’ teams to ensure that successful development are delivered on time, on budget and defect free.

Opened at the beginning of 2021, the Bristol Emersons Green Travelodge is a prime example of a new, out-of-town, bespoke, mixed-use development.

  • New Development
  • 4 Storey hotel
  • 90 Bedrooms
  • Co-located with Costa and Greene King

The site is prominently located fronting the A4174 Bristol Ring Road, at the gateway to the nearby major Bristol Science Park and Business Parks. This is a major expansion area for Bristol, with significant population growth expected over the next 20 years. The ease of access to both the M4 and M32 and the centre of Bristol (20mins/6 miles) makes this a great location for business and leisure customers. The location was chosen to provide a great stay for visitors to arrive by car and park for free on site for convenient visits into the centre of Bristol.

This site was introduced to Travelodge by Hartnell Taylor Cook in Feb 2017. Travelodge exchanged a conditional contract with the then owner, Shepherds, in March 2019, which then sold the freehold of the entire site to Hinton Developments, following the grant of planning consent in November 2019. Hinton sub sold part of the site to Greene King and forward funded the development of a 90-room Travelodge and separate Costa drive thru unit with the Bank of Montreal, which has retained the freehold and became Travelodge’s landlord when the lease was granted on practical completion of the hotel. Hinton Construction undertook the development of the hotel and drive-thru unit.

Issues that we had to resolve for this project included shared access for Costa’s servicing vehicles over Travelodge’s demise, which enabled the Costa site to be optimised for parking and for its drive-thru lane and shared pole signage.

Further information about this transaction can be obtain from Stephen Tyler, our Development Manager for this deal, who can be contacted on 07917 242 682.

Some other examples of standalone/mixed-use projects are shown below:

Rochdale – opened 2021. Constructed on part of a car park of an existing retail and leisure park and built alongside a new KFC drive-thru restaurant
Hexham – opened 2022. New mixed-use development on the edge of the town, comprising a standalone Travelodge, Mcdonalds’s restaurant and Lidl supermarket.