Strong recovery for hotel firm Travelodge

Hotel chain Travelodge, which operates 25 hotels across the West Midlands, made a strong recovery in 2021.

WALSALL COPYRIGHT EXPRESS AND STAR STEVE LEATH 29/02/2019..Pic in Walsall Centre at the opening of a new Travelodge. West Mids Mayor: Andy Street and Walsall Mayor: Marco Longhi were there to open it. Pictured with: Hannah Thomson (People Director at Travelodge)..

For the year it returned to profit and saw revenue rise from £284.4 million in 2020 to £559.8m in 2021.

Adjusted earnings before tax were £81.1m from a loss of £74m a year before.

In the final quarter of the year revenue was up 1.8 per cent to £185.1m – ahead of the pre-Covid level in 2019 of £181.8m.

Travelodge opened 17 new hotels opened in the year and had 592 hotels and 44,984 rooms at the end of the year.

This year there has been an improvement in trading following the lifting of the work from home guidance on January 26 with strong leisure trading expected to continue, driven by staycation demand.

This year, 60 Travelodge hotels are being upgraded to the new budget-luxe design.

Martin Robinson, Travelodge chairman, said: “Travelodge reinforced its position as a resilient business with a powerful brand throughout a challenging 2021. I would like to thank all of our colleagues, it was the whole team’s hard work, dedication and flexibility that got us through the year. The business continued to out-perform the market for the seventh year in a row and enjoyed a record-breaking summer."

“Trading so far in 2022 has been extremely encouraging, despite a slow start amidst the Omicron restrictions in January, and we are excited to launch our new budget-luxe hotel design, which offers a more premium look and feel whilst maintaining our great value price proposition. This is our most radical brand transformation to date and has been created in response to Britain becoming a nation of budget travellers, with more of us choosing to stay in budget hotels," added Mr Robinson.

2021 was significantly impacted by Covid-19 with restrictions in place for most of the first half of the year. Traveodge started the year with around 300 hotels open for essential business travel, with a gradual re-opening of the estate in line with demand over the following months, before restrictions on leisure travel were partially lifted in May.

Travelodge became Britain’s first value hotel brand when it launched in the UK in 1985, opening its first hotel at Barton under Needwood in Staffordshire.

More than10,000 were working across the business at the end of 2021.