Hotel worker Natalie Thomas’ bottom is so good at detecting lumps in beds she is having her prize asset insured for £4million. Premier Inns bed-tester Natalie Thomas shows off her bed testing skills (Picture: Premier Inn) The 39-year-old from Luton, Bedfordshire, tests about 24 guest beds a day as âdirector of bed bouncingâ for budget hotel chain Premier Inn. Natalie is tasked with testing how comfortable each of the chain’s 46,000 beds is, spending around 20 minutes on each one. Premier Inn will be opening 20 new hotels in the next two years across London in locations such as Leicester Square, Blackfriars, Old Street, Holborn and Islington. The companyâs newest hotel in Stratford was officially was opened last month by Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants managing director Patrick Dempsey. He said: ‘Our exciting growth in London means that we can offer even more people a great nightâs sleep in the best locations when visiting the capital.
‘Premier Inn London Stratford is an outstanding 267 bedroom hotel in one of the best locations in London. We are right in the middle of Europeâs biggest shopping centre, adjacent the Olympic Stadium and six minutes by high speed train from St Pancras.’Premier Inn London Euston Hotel Pictures Photo: “One of the many bed bugs we found” From Review: of Premier Inn London Euston Hotel “Great location, great staff” “Excellent Location - very Good Hot...” Read all 3,714 reviews My partner woke me up at 2:30am this morning complaining of being bitten by bugs in the bed. We turned the light on to find around ten bed bugs crawling all around us and immediately phoned reception. I offered for the receptionist to come to our room and take a look for himself but he declined, due to him saying... Thank you for reviewing your time with us. I am really sorry to read that you didn’t have a great experience here with us. I am also pleased to see that you were refunded under our good night guarantee policy.
its larger rival, which is owned by FTSE 100 leisure giant Whitbread. For example, when Premier Inn ran advertisements claiming to be the biggest hotel operator in London, Travelodge reported it to the Advertising Standards Authority and Premier Inn was forced to withdrawTravelodge had previously complained to the ASA over PremierThat time, Whitbread hit back by accusing Travelodge of an ' inaccurate and misleading PR stunt'. Now a new row has erupted over the sensitive issue of data. Premier Inn and Travelodge spend heavily each week on analysis of how well they are doing compared with the rest of the market on price, They make significant c ommercial decisions on that informat ion - where to deploy staff, concentrate promotional activity and even where to build new hotels. Both have been using TRI Hospitality Consulting forHowever, Guy Parsons, the managing director of Travelodge, is not'For the large part of the year we were outperformingthe
'But then Whitbread also claimed to be outperformingIt didn't seem logical.' He says he made enquiries to TRI and discovered that Whitbread was not putting all its data into the system. 'We'd like to see data showing the performance of all of the Premier Inns, not just a Charlie Herbert, e-commerce director at Travelodge, adds: 'We were trying to get out of TRI a proper view of the budget hotel market but what we were getting was a distorted view. Whitbread were giving a selection of data that potentially shows them in a better light.' When Travelodge threatened to pull out of TRI, Parsons was called by 'a very senior person at Whitbread' and begged to reconsider, heBut Travelodge says that Whitbread still will not give all its figures and has made good its threat to leave, taking its business to rival company STR Global. For its part, Whitbread strongly denies any hint of playing with the figures and claims that it is just another case of its smaller rival
trying to grab headlines by being rude about its larger competitor. Officially, it said: 'TRI has full access to our data in accordance with our agreement with them and we have been providing them with this data ' It is a highly respected survey used throughout the industry by all the major brands. The results demonstrate our outperformance as customers clearly prefer the Premier Inn brand.' Behind the scenes the company is furious that once again Travelodge is 'playing these tricks'. 'We don't want to get dragged down to Travelodge's level,' said'As a private company it can go around saying whatever it likes but it's really childish. 'We're not happy at all that they've pulled out from TRI as those figures gave the best picture of the market. And the idea that we have in some way sought to hide or distort the figures or done anything but fully comply with our contract with TRI is completely wrong and Travelodge should really watch what it says.'
Mark Dickens of TRI said: 'We regret the decision by Travelodge to withdraw but will continue to provide a great benchmarking service.' Andrew Sangster, editor of Hotel Analyst, which jointly publishes an annual report on the budget hotel industry with TRI, says the business is traditionally quite sedate and gentlemanly, 'but the Travelodge guys are more like Ryanair's Michael O'Leary - they reallyThe market has seen massive growth but demand is approaching saturation and competition is fierce.' Now that Travelodge has walked out on TRI, he says 'it will be very hard for anyone to get a true picture of the sector, which isn't good for the industry or Travelodge itself. If it wants to float on the stock market in the future, how is it going to show its performance inIt seems as if it has shot itself in the foot.' Both Parsons and Grant Hearn, Travelodge's chairman, were guests at the leaving party in London last year for Whitbread former chief