Whitbread PLC, the UK’s largest hotel business and owner of Premier Inn, has welcomed guests to its first hotel opening in the heart of Cambridge City Centre at the Lion Yard Shopping Centre.
Working with investment and asset manager abrdn, the company has converted vacant office space above the prime shopping centre into a latest format 125-bedroom Premier Inn.
The opening is Whitbread’s first hotel in the centre of Cambridge and has created 31 new permanent roles. All the new team members benefit from the FTSE100 company’s in-house training and apprenticeship opportunities.
Construction work commenced in March 2023 led by principal contractor Carter Lauren. The hotel offers Premier Inn’s latest format ‘standard’ and enhanced Premier Plus bedrooms as well as an integrated restaurant space on the first floor. Guests access the hotel via a dedicated entrance on Guild Hall Street round the corner from Pretty Cury, one of the city’s premier shopping streets.
More than 7.6 million visits are made to Cambridge annually which are worth over £2bn to the local economy according to Visit Cambridge, the official Destination Management Organisation for the city, with the number of visitors increasing by 3.5% every year. The Lion Yard Shopping Centre experiences an average weekly footfall of more than 200,000 people.
Reducing energy consumption, waste and the consumption of resources – including from non-domestic buildings like hotels – are two of six policy objectives identified by Cambridge City Council in its Climate Change Strategy [2021 to 2026] as causes and consequences of climate change.
The opening of the Cambridge City Centre Lion Yard Premier Inn grows Whitbread’s footprint in the city to four locations and more than 430 bedrooms. Across the UK, the company operates more than 85,500 Premier Inn bedrooms and it believes there is the long-term potential for 125,000 UK rooms.
Ahead of opening the doors Whitbread partnered with innovative community engagement platform ActionFunder to fundraise for local charities working across the city.
Team members employed at the new hotel voted on a shortlist of six charities, four of which were selected to share an allocation of Whitbread’s £10,000 local charity fund for the site. To see the projects funded and their updates please see here.
Hotel website
Premier Inn Cambridge City Centre (Corn Exchange/Lion Yard)
Guildhall Street
Cambridge, CB2 3NH
United Kingdom
+44 333 014 9485
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