The rooms in Premier Inn’s German hotels have a key difference to those in the UK: each double bed is fitted with two piles of bedding. “It’s very much a German preference not to share a duvet,” said Alison Brittain, chief executive of parent company Whitbread, on a tour of one of the chain’s newest outposts in Hamburg.
Brittain’s mission to entice German families into her hotels means that the breakfast looks a little different, too: bagels, cold meats and cheeses, instead of a full English breakfast. And the bar, which stretches across the ground floor, is a focal point of the hotel.
There are now 40 Premier Inns in Germany, with a further 40 in the pipeline. Brittain believes the brand, with its Rest Easy slogan, could grow to a similar size as in the UK, where it has 820 hotels used by both families and business travellers. She has used Germany’s long series of lockdowns to invest, snapping up packages of hotels from smaller operators eager to quit the market. A quick refurbishment, including new bathrooms and furniture, and the hotels have reopened under the Premier Inn brand.
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