March 2022 - Travelodge Property Development

Travelodge is expanding its in-house maintenance team and is looking to fill 40 roles

Travelodge is expanding its dedicated 145 strong nationwide in-house maintenance team with a further 40 new positions.

Travelodge is the only UK budget hotel chain that has invested in a bespoke dedicated in-house maintenance team of experts to support its hotels across the length and breadth of the UK.

These new full time positions are field based, carrying out a variety of maintenance related tasks across the company’s 578 UK-based Travelodge hotels. Each Maintenance Engineer will be given their own network of hotels to service.

These positions need to be filled immediately and applicants must have at least one trade skill-set which includes a City & Guilds / NVQ 2 or equivalent qualification in a trade (for example: Plumbing, Carpentry, Painting, Plastering or Air-Conditioning). In addition applicants must hold a UK driving licence in order to apply. Travelodge is keen to attract a diverse group of applicants for these roles.

Travelodge is committed to developing its maintenance team and has an established training programme in place to up-skill the maintenance team members; so that they are multi-skilled and qualified to undertake a range of jobs across the company’s estate.

Successful candidates will be given a branded kitted-out vehicle to enable them to travel across their network of hotels and they will also receive a comprehensive personal package of branded uniform and high quality tools.

For further information on these 40 positions and to apply please visit: www.travelodge.co.uk/careers.

Scott Rutherford, Director of Property Services, Travelodge: “We are delighted to be expanding our in-house maintenance team with a further 40 Maintenance Engineers roles. This dedicated team is the backbone of our operation and regarded as the fourth emergency services for our 578 hotel teams, so each Maintenance Engineer holds a very valuable position within the company. Candidates must hold one trade skill but we are committed to developing and expanding our Maintenance Engineers’ skill sets so that they arefully versatile in multi trade skills.

Travelodge appoints ‘Disability Positive’ to advise on policy affecting customers living with a disability or long-term health conditions

Travelodge has appointed Disability Positive to advise on policy and training programmes – to support customers living with disability and long term health conditions and their families.

Cheshire based charity, Disability Positive, started in 1992 and is majority led, managed and staffed by people with lived experiences of disability and long term health conditions. The charity has over three decades of providing support, services, opportunities and a voice to people with lived experience of a disability and their families. Disability Positive is also well known for influencing positive change in Government policy.

Annually Travelodge welcomes millions of customers across its hotels and some of these customers are living with a disability or a long-term health condition.

Disability Positive will provide advice supporting Travelodge to further evolve and enhance its customer journey, helping to make travel accessible to everyone. The charity will undertake a review of the full Travelodge journey for customers living with disability and long term health conditions and their families. This includes searching for a Travelodge hotel, booking a room, checking-in and out, their experience in the room and bathroom and dining – to help Travelodge enhance the customer experience.

Travelodge’s other charity partners include the NSPCC and The British Heart Foundation. To date, with the help of its staff and customers, Travelodge has raised over £650,000 for The British Heart Foundation.

It’s a UK First –Travelodge creates an army of RoboVac Buddies to support its nationwide housekeeping

RoboVac Buddies ‘checking in’ to London City Travelodge

To view and download video and images of the Travelodge RoboVac Buddies in action, visit: https://bit.ly/3rA4C3N

We are very excited to kick start 2022 by revolutionising the hospitality sector and supporting our housekeeping teams with the roll-out of the UK’s first hotel RoboVac Buddy recruitment programme.

Housekeeping is the most important and physically demanding job at Travelodge and we are always looking for low cost and innovative ways to support our colleagues. Automating vacuuming with the introduction of the Travelodge RoboVac Buddies is a fun, win-win solution which helps us to drive a greener, cleaner and more efficient room clean.

This multi-million pound investment of 7,500 RoboVac Buddies is Travelodge’s latest brand evolving initiative, specifically designed to support the company’s 579 housekeeping teams – who have to clean up to nearly 44,000 rooms every day, 365 days of the year.

This is no mean feat, as housekeeping is one of the most important and physically demanding jobs within the hotel sector. This role includes the remit of vacuuming, which is a strenuous task.

To help lighten the workload for its housekeeping team members, who collectively vacuum the distance from London to New York every day, Travelodge travelled into the future to create an industrial ‘hotel spec’ RoboVac.

The hotel chain teamed up with KILLIS Ltd, a Sheffield-based company that specialises in manufacturing specialist cleaning equipment, and together engineered the UK’s first industrial RoboVac designed for a busy hotel.

This laborious mission took nine months to complete and included the production of five prototypes before the birth of the Travelodge RoboVac Buddy. But this is no ordinary RoboVac – it has robust features to enable it to withstand the daily heavy duty requirements of working in a busy hotel. These features include:

An industrial booster battery allowing the RoboVac Buddy to vacuum lots of rooms with one charge during their shift
A larger and lighter dust collector so that the RoboVac Buddy just needs to be emptied at the end of its shift
It is greener and quieter than a traditional corded vacuum cleaner. A traditional vacuum uses 1,200 watts of power while the RoboVac takes 60 watts of power. It is also bagless, so reduces waste to landfill
It speaks Travelodge-specific software data language

District Manager Stuart Bell with RoboVacs

A Travelodge RoboVac Buddy has been allocated to each housekeeping team member to support them during their shift. Whilst the housekeeping team member completes a comprehensive room and bathroom cleaning task list, its RoboVac Buddy gets to work, thoroughly vacuuming the room. This includes going under the Travelodge Dreamer bed and in every nook and cranny of the room. It also vacuums the hotel’s hallways, public spaces and the Bar Café if the hotel has one.

At the end of their shift, the Travelodge RoboVac Buddies are tucked into their custom made (six) team bunk beds for some much needed R&R (Recharge & Rest). Each hotel has been supplied with 12 RoboVac Buddies on average, while larger sites have up to 40.

Travelodge has around 1,000 RoboVacs on standby in a secret base so that they can be deployed to a Travelodge hotel in case of an emergency.

KILLIS Ltd who designed and built the RoboVac Buddy with Travelodge have also built a bespoke surgery at their headquarters to provide a full health service for the Travelodge RoboVac Buddies.

Tibor Killi, KILLIS Ltd, Managing Director, said: “We are delighted to work with Travelodge and create the UK’s first hospitality spec RoboVac. This is the largest cleaning equipment mobilisation in our company’s history and it has been an honour to be making history with Travelodge within the hospitality world.”

“The Travelodge RoboVac Buddies are going to revolutionise the company’s housekeeping teams working lives and will be a great addition to the Travelodge hotel teams. It has been a pleasure working with an innovative company who puts its people and customers at the heart of its business, and we look forward to the next challenge Travelodge gives us.”

Travelodge comes to Braintree

Official ribbon-cutting ceremony at Braintree Travelodge

Travelodge has officially opened its first hotel in Braintree and its 14^th property in Essex. This is the company’s first hotel opening of 2022 and boosts the group’s network to 594 hotels across the UK, Ireland and Spain. This 70-room hotel includes an on-site restaurant, called the Bar Cafe, and on-site car parking. It is prominently located in the town centre and was developed and funded by Braintree District Council, which has retained the completed development.

This scheme is a great example of brownfield development and town centre regeneration, bringing an under-utilised town centre site into beneficial use and occupation. The project is a mixed-use development, comprising of a ground floor car park, health centre (with a lease guaranteed by the NHS) and the Travelodge hotel on a 25-year term, with no breaks.

The scheme was constructed on behalf of the Council by Kier Group, who did a great job of developing the hotel through the Covid-19 pandemic.

In addition to creating new jobs within the local community, this regeneration development provides the Council with annual income via business rates and rent. In addition Travelodge customers will spend on average double their room rate with local businesses which equates to a multi-million boost for the local economy. All in all, this new Travelodge hotel opening is a win-win for all parties.

Braintree Travelodge was officially opened by the Chairman of Braintree District Council, Cllr Sue Wilson (left) and Steve Bennett, Travelodge Chief Property & Development Officer

This deal is Travelodge’s 21st Local Council partnership deal which led to the group opening its first hotel in Braintree town centre and supporting local regeneration.

With the material downturn in High Street retailing leading to millions of square feet of vacant space, much of this will need to be repurposed and Travelodge is transacting and seeking more Council-partnering deals.

Aviva and IM Properties cash in on their Travelodge assets

Recently, two Travelodge landlords, Aviva and IM Properties have each sold one of their Travelodge assets for a good return, demonstrating investor confidence in the strength of the Travelodge business and the UK branded budget hotel sector.

The first sale was of London Battersea Travelodge, a 121-room hotel located in a Travel Zone 2, which was sold by IM Properties. The company acquired the hotel in 2017 for £29.6 million, reflecting a NIY at that time of 5%. The hotel, which is wholly occupied by Travelodge under a lease with 28-years unexpired, has now been sold to a UK Investment Fund, for £36.5 million, reflecting a NIY of 4.25%.

The second transaction was for Bournemouth Seafront Travelodge, a 110-room hotel and Bar Café, situated by Bournemouth beach. Aviva sold this asset for £9.3 million, reflecting a NIY of 6.15%. This lease investment is not an unencumbered freehold and is complicated by having the upper floor of the property used for residential flats that have been sold off as separate residential units on long leases.

Mike Burden from Kimmre, who managed the sales process on both of these transactions, commented in relation to the Bournemouth sale: “There was strong interest in the bidding process with two offers at ahead of 6% but either were conditional on securing debt or protracted time scales. As such, an all cash offer which concluded at the end of last year with more certainty was the preferred option.”

Tony O’Brien, UK Development Director for Travelodge: “There is growing evidence of investor confidence returning to the hotel sector. With the very significant sharpening in investment yields for distribution, trade counter and supermarket lease investments in the last 12 months, driving these sectors to record low yields, investors are looking for alternative long-income lease investments, offering better value. The recent Premier Inn investment sales and fundings have been at yields sharper than their pre-pandemic levels and the yield discounts for Travelodge is making our lease investments look increasingly attractive, especially in light of Travelodge’s very strong Q3 2021 trading update, which showed significant out-performance versus the rest of the UK hotel industry and the competitor Midscale & Economy sectors.”

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