Travelodge started as rooms added to a chain of roadside eateries throughout the UK. Under CEO Grant Hearn they are adding an hotel a week to the stock. This one is in a converted office building. Already the operator has been able to add an additional clutch of meeting rooms and some additional bedrooms as another adjacent part of the development became vacant and was offered by the landlord.

Within easy strike of here are a whole clutch of attractions apart from the half hour train ride into central London, with Wimbledon tennis, Twickenham rugby, three racecourses, soccer grounds, theme parks, Universities and airports all within a few miles and easy travel of these budget bedrooms. Book via the web and the earlier you book the less you pay “perhaps as low as a tenner a room” I was told. With easy secure parking and its own café bar it is an attractive offer for visitors to London and Surrey.

Tolworth Tower is a significant landmark on one of the main routes into London. It sits at the edge of the London conurbation, almost a suburb of a suburb. Nominally located in Surbiton, an area that itself has largely blurred into the Royal Borough of Kingston-on-Thames, so named because it is where English Kings were crowned prior to the Norman invasion of 1066. Kingston is of course now itself a part of the London urban sprawl, and this hotel is a major addition to the budget rooms available within the M25 motorway ring for those visiting the city.

Design has been handled by the in-house team at Travelodge; with the PACE team handling all the fit out and FF&E issues. In this instance the team took on the usual office building – large open plan spaces with all services laid in, simply breaking them up into the standard and standardised design modules for fitting throughout the floor space available. This also enables the operator to take advantage of additional adjacent spaces that become available within the building. In some areas the emergency exits from rented offices share the hotel common areas, so the electronic locking system is extended to cover corridor doors – a device that also add extra security for guests.

External graphics is clear and strong

for visual clarity the bath grab rails are in the house blue in both DDA and standard rooms

The reverse of this is that if these adjacent office areas become vacant, the hotel can be allowed to expand into them at relatively minor additional cost, as they can share existing access routes and they already have their own services laid on. As offices are vacated then they also vacate their requirements for car parking so the expansion of rooms can be maintained in equilibrium with other spaces and facilities. Currently the hotel has 132 rooms, and is already enjoying high occupancy rates both from the weekend leisure market and from business traffic during the week.

Design has similarities with retail design. The entrance lobby is a two storey space with typical finishes and lighting that would not appear out of place in a retail environment – simple sprayed finishes and the lighting suspended from the shell of the building.Colours are simply handled, clean and effective, occasionally striking. The new corporate graphics for the chain have been etched into the glazed screen at the entrance making perhaps the most successful iteration of the logo. However the external signage is strong on the building with high visibility, simple clear typeface design and strong basic colours.