The Gyle at Edinburgh Park, Premier Inn, has become the UK’s first battery-powered hotel. The idea is part of a bid to improve energy efficiency, secure power supply and enable energy cost savings on-site.

Unite has called on Premier Inn-owner Whitbread to end exploitative work practices and its ‘work until you drop’ culture. The move comes after Channel 4’s Dispatches lifted the lid on worker abuse at the hotel chain.

Premier Inn has officially opened its 750th hotel, in Chiswick. The £28.3 million addition to the estate expands on the brand’s portfolio in the capital and supports Premier Inn’s ambition to be everywhere that business travellers need to be.

Travelport and Premier Inn, the UK and Ireland’s biggest and fastest growing hotel company have announced a new distribution agreement that will make the hotel chain’s properties available to Travelport-connected travel agencies worldwide. Jackie Usher, head of sales at Premier Inn, said: “We are pleased to announce that our agreement will see Premier Inn content available to Travelport connected agents worldwide.”

Whitbread’s Premier Inn brand has claimed the accolade of best known hotel brand in Britain, knocking Hilton off the top perch. The most recent quarterly update on the British Hotel Guest Survey, just published by BDRC Continental, shows Premier Inn on 58 per cent unaided awareness among business travellers, and so ahead of Hilton for the first time ever in this market segment, albeit just by a single percentage point. 

Whitbread has announced the launch of its new hotel concept, ‘hub by Premier Inn’. The new concept will target major UK city centres such as London and Edinburgh, with the first ‘hub by Premier Inn’ to open on St. Martin’s Lane in London in summer 2014.