Premier Inn will open the doors to its new flagship location in Oxford city centre at Paradise Square tomorrow (23 July), a few metres from the Westgate Shopping Centre, with 27 new jobs created.
The new 90-bedroom hotel brings Premier Inn’s latest format bedrooms, including its enhanced Premier Plus rooms, into the heart of Oxford city centre for the very first time.
The new hotel opening will mean that the chain has reach its 1,000th Premier Plus room – an enhanced room concept with further locations across the UK. The room design builds on the features of Premier Inn’s popular standard rooms but benefits from additional facilities you can see here.
Whitbread intends to add a further 1,000 Premier Plus rooms across its national estate in the next six months, doubling the number of Premier Plus rooms available by 2022. These rooms will be added to Premier Inn’s network through a mixture of new openings and refurbishments of existing bedrooms.
Richard Aldread, Head of Construction in the UK regions and Ireland for Whitbread, said, “We spotted the opportunity to bring Premier Inn’s affordable bedrooms into the heart of Oxford city centre around the time the plans to redevelop the Westgate Shopping Centre were being discussed.
'With the help of a talented team of designers and development professionals, and the support of City Council officers, we have built a superb new hotel in a challenging setting.
'It’s a proud moment to see the hotel open and I have no doubt that it will be extremely popular with our business and leisure guests and play a positive role in supporting the city’s economy.”
The Oxford City Council Core Strategy recognises the need for up to 15 new hotels in the city in the period to 2026 as the Council seeks to encourage overnight visitors to stay for longer and spend more in the city.
The Oxford city centre (Westgate) hotel is the second Premier Inn to open in Oxford this year, following the opening of a 123-bedroom hotel at Botley in May, and grows the brand’s network of hotels in Oxford to four locations. The company anticipates that 35,000 guests will stay at the Westgate hotel every year based on pre-pandemic occupancy data.
Whitbread is continuing to expand Premier Inn in popular locations like Oxford and sees the potential for further Premier Inn hotels in Oxford city centre and to the east of the city.