Caroline Dinenage, MP for Gosport joined the town’s Mayor, Councillor Kathy Jones and Bryn Taylor, Travelodge Regional Director for South East in a ribbon cutting ceremony yesertday to officially open the town’s first Travelodge hotel.
Gosport Travelodge is the company’s 589th hotel and its 19th property in Hampshire. It is also one of two hotels the hotel chain is opening in the county this year.
The second hotel is located in Portsmouth city centre and will be the company’s third hotel in the city. It is a Travelodge Plus hotel – which is the company’s stylish budget chic hotel format. It offers a contemporary designed on-site restaurant called the Bar Café and also features the company’s premium economy SuperRooms. The 152-room hotel is located by the city’s main railway station and is scheduled to open this summer.
Gosport Travelodge, which is located close to the ferry terminal, represents an investment of £6.5m for third party investors and has created 20 new jobs within the local community.
Gosport Travelodge features 70 rooms which include a selection of family, double and accessible rooms. It has an on-site restaurant called The Bar Café and offers on-site car parking.
The rooms have been designed by Travelodge business and leisure customers and the décor features a sleep inducing colour palette, introduced by a chromotherapy expert. The featured walls are painted a tranquil blue, as research shows our body clock is programmed to relate the colour blue to the hours of darkness, so our metabolism slows down, making us feel relaxed and sleepy.
The hero in all rooms is the bespoke luxurious king-size Travelodge Dreamer bed which has been especially commissioned by Sleepeezee who hold a Royal Warrant and make beds for Prince Charles. The Travelodge Dreamer Bed boasts a 952 pocket sprung mattress and is designed to follow the body’s natural contour providing the correct amount of support and comfort, ensuring a great night’s sleep.
The bed sits within a mood lighting surround with integrated bedside shelves featuring individual charging ports to avoid bedtime arguments about charging devices. In addition, all family rooms include two individual single beds for children.
The rooms also include an en-suite bathroom with power shower, a personalised comfort cooling system – so that you can regulate the temperature of your room, a 32 inch Freeview TV, free in-room tea & coffee making facilities and Wifi.
Caroline Dinenage MP for Gosport said, “It is fantastic to see Travelodge investing in Gosport High Street- it comes in the wake of the recent announcement of Heritage Action Zones funding, which will continue to breathe new life into our High Street. The hotel creates twenty brand new jobs, offering invaluable employment opportunities to local people.”
Bryn Taylor, Travelodge Regional Director for South East said: “As Hampshire’s first budget hotel chain, we are delighted to be opening two hotels in the county this year. Gosport is growing from strength to strength and we are delighted to have opened our first hotel in the heart of the town centre. It will certainly be a magnet that will attract new business and leisure travellers to the area.
'This is great news for the local economy; as our research shows customers will spend double their room rate during their stay with local businesses. Annually this can equate to a boost of £2 million into the local economy.”
Gosport Travelodge is being managed by Irita Zigure, one of the company’s rising stars who has successfully climbed the career ladder from an entry position into management.
Zigure started as a housekeeping supervisor at Southampton Central Travelodge in 2015 and within 12 months earned a place on the in-house management development programme called Aspire. On the programme, Irita learnt all the skills and obtained the qualifications to become a hotel manager.
In 2017, Zigure was promoted to Assistant Hotel Manager at Southampton Central Travelodge and within the year secured her dream job as Hotel Manager at Southampton Travelodge. Irita held this position until late last year when she fought fierce competition and became the hotel manager for Gosport Travelodge.
Zigure received over 1,000 applications for the 20 positions she advertised for her new team at the Gosport Travelodge hotel. She was so overwhelmed by the high calibre of applications she received that she recruited her strong team in just one week.
Irita Zigure, Hotel Manager, Gosport Travelodge said: “I never imagined when I started with Travelodge as a Housekeeper Supervisor that one day I would be managing a newly built hotel which is also the town’s first Travelodge, this is what hotel managers dream of.”
“The hotel is a great attraction; I received over 1,000 applications from local people wanting to join my team which was overwhelming. I am very proud to have built a great team who are as passionate as me about delivering great customer service.
'At Travelodge we are committed to helping unemployed parents back to work by offering flexible working hours around the school run supported with a range of benefits. I am delighted that I have attracted a lot of parents to join my team too. They can work around the school run and climb the career ladder whilst raising their family.”
“I am looking forward to developing my team members and giving them the same opportunities that I was given and hopefully they can become our hotel managers of the future.”
“Our new hotel has got off to a flying start and with room rates from £29, we are set for a very busy year ahead.”