Whitbread sets itselfa university challenge
Whitbread is to open a Travel Inn on the Nottingham Trent University campus next year.
It wants to follow the opening with Travel Inns on every city centre university campus in the UK.
The company is investing £6m in building the Travel Inn on the university-owned Goldsmith Street site in Nottingham. It will manage it under the terms of a turnover lease, which allows Nottingham Trent to take a share of the hotel's revenue in return for lease of the site.
Construction work will start in January and the hotel will open for business next November. It will create more than 80 jobs.
"This is an exciting and unique partnership with Whitbread and will enable us to offer value-for-money accommodation for our long-distance students and conference delegates right in the heart of our city campus," said Ged O'Donaghue, director of estates and resources at Nottingham Trent University.
Whitbread has written to every UK university with a city centre campus, asking if it would be interested in a similar scheme.
"There's no response as yet - it's early days, but I'll be surprised if we don't get any interest, "a company spokesman said.
