Whitbread, the owner of the UK’s largest hotel business, is continuing to invest in Manchester with its fifth Premier Inn hotel in Manchester city centre opening its doors today.
The new 157-bed hotel (pictured) at Princess Street to the south of the city centre offers skyline views of the city at rates starting from £35 per night for guests travelling for work, education, or other legally permitted reasons ahead of leisure travel reopening on 17 May.
Located within the £750m Circle Square development and constructed above a striking multi-storey car park, the hotel brings Premier Inn’s latest format bedrooms to the Oxford Road catchment and increases its network in Manchester city centre to more than 960 rooms.
Kevin Murray, Senior Acquisition Manager for Whitbread, said, “Manchester is a hugely popular and thriving market for Premier Inn guests travelling for business and leisure. It is also a city where we are seeking to redefine, improve and expand our presence in key destination locations.
'The new Princess Street Premier Inn symbolises how we want to grow in the city – by investing in bold and sustainable hotels where we expect to see long-term demand for our style of affordable accommodation.”
The new development at Princess Street has created an opportunity for Whitbread to actively manage its network of hotels in the city.
A short walk from the Princess Street hotel, Whitbread is proposing to redevelop the site of its Deansgate Locks Premier Inn into a mixed-use development consisting of 370 apartments and high-quality workspace fitting of its gateway location.
The business is also seeking out new locations for Premier Inn and its hub by Premier Inn brand in the Piccadilly area of the city and at Eastlands near Manchester City’s Etihad Campus and Sportcity. Development opportunities of between 100 and 200 bedrooms are sought at both locations.
In April, Whitbread launched a TV and digital marketing campaign, ‘Rest Easy’, to promote the quality of Premier Inn’s offer to customers. The business also reported in its Preliminary results on 27th April that it expected strong demand for ‘staycations’ in UK tourist destinations throughout the summer.
Searches on premierinn.com indicate that this staycation demand is also being seen in the city, with spikes in demand during the summer half-term break and the first weeks of the summer school holidays for Premier Inn rooms across Greater Manchester.