Welcome Break opens UK's biggest M-way hotel

Welcome Break opened the largest hotel on the UK's motorway network on Thursday (1 August). The 202-bedroom Days Inn hotel took one year to build and cost £10m.

The hotel is at the service station operator's London Gateway site on the M1 at Mill Hill in north-west London. It has conference and meeting rooms, a 133-seat pizza and pasta restaurant, and a bar. It replaces the Welcome Lodge which stood on the site from 1978 until it was demolished last year.

Jerry Appleyard, Welcome Break's director of hotels, said: "The new Days Inn hotel's position makes it an ideal base for people who are visiting the capital for business or pleasure, but do not want to pay London hotel prices." Rooms cost £69 per night.

Welcome Break runs 13 Days Inn hotels and eight Welcome Lodges, which are to be converted to the Days Inn brand.

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 1-7 August 2002