Premier Inn opens at Cambridge’s Lion Yard
Whitbread PLC, the UK’s largest hotel business and owner of Premier Inn, has welcomed guests to its first hotel opening in the heart of Cambridge City Centre at the Lion Yard Shopping Centre.
Working with investment and asset manager abrdn, the company has converted vacant office space above the prime shopping centre into a latest format 125-bedroom Premier Inn.
The opening is Whitbread’s first hotel in the centre of Cambridge and has created 31 new permanent roles. All the new team members benefit from the FTSE100 company’s in-house training and apprenticeship opportunities.
Paul Smith, Acquisitions Manager at Whitbread, said:
“I don’t know many hotel locations as good as the Cambridge City Centre Lion Yard Premier Inn. The hotel really is in the beating heart of the city, surrounded by beautiful heritage buildings, with all the attractions of the city centre a short walk away for our guests. It is one of the most unusual hotels in the Premier Inn network and I am sure it will become one of our customers’ favourites.
“We have been able to secure the location through our openminded approach to growing the Premier Inn estate. Working with abrdn, on behalf of the owner, we were able to transform a redundant office space into a thriving hotel in an environmentally conscious way.”
Construction work commenced in March 2023 led by principal contractor Carter Lauren. The hotel offers Premier Inn’s latest format ‘standard’ and enhanced Premier Plus bedrooms as well as an integrated restaurant space on the first floor. Guests access the hotel via a dedicated entrance on Guild Hall Street round the corner from Pretty Cury, one of the city’s premier shopping streets.
Will Steward, Project and Programme Manager at Whitbread, said:
“Most of the original structure has been retained and we have improved the energy efficiency and acoustic performance of the building to bring it in line with our latest standards and what our customers expect of us. It is a special and sustainable development which is a testament to successful partnership working, our flexibility, and the skill and experience of the team in being able to transform an unused space into one Premier Inn will occupy for 25 or more years. I’m very proud to have been involved in the development.”
More than 7.6 million visits are made to Cambridge annually which are worth over £2bn to the local economy according to Visit Cambridge, the official Destination Management Organisation for the city, with the number of visitors increasing by 3.5% every year. The Lion Yard Shopping Centre experiences an average weekly footfall of more than 200,000 people.
Stuart Howard, Senior Development Manager at abrdn, said:
“We have enjoyed working with Whitbread, Cambridge City Council and Cambridgeshire County Council on the new Premier Inn. We would like to thank our professional consultant team for whom, without their combined hard work this project would not have been a success.
“Given the constrained city centre location, the team had to work with existing neighbours, trading retail tenants and manage deliveries within a live operational retail service yard in the basement. It was testament to the Principal contractor to have delivered the project in just over a year of being on site, converting the former commercial offices into a 125-bedroom Premier Inn hotel, which will bring with it wide economic benefits to the city.
“Sustainability was at the core of the Lion Yard hotel design and the project satisfies a range of key sustainability objectives, including accessibility and circularity. The existing building structure was largely retained, and we took care to reuse the materials we carefully removed as part of the refurbishment works where we could. Through the improvements we have made, including the installation of heat pumps and PV cells, we are hopeful the building will achieve an EPC ‘A’ sustainability rating.”
Reducing energy consumption, waste and the consumption of resources – including from non-domestic buildings like hotels – are two of six policy objectives identified by Cambridge City Council in its Climate Change Strategy [2021 to 2026] as causes and consequences of climate change.
Councillor Katie Thornburrow, Executive Councillor for Planning, Building Control and Infrastructure at Cambridge City Council, commented:
“Cambridge is a very special place, and one that we all treasure. Like everywhere, we have to do our part in adapting to global heating, and the City Council is already taking action. Our goal is to make Cambridge a net zero city by 2030, but we will only achieve this with support from across the city, including our strong and important visitor sector.
“We can achieve an enormous amount even in the historic city centre, and it’s inspiring to see businesses thinking hard about how to adapt and rejuvenate unused spaces. I welcome Premier Inn’s effort to enrich the city by investing in the sustainable development and operation of a vital service to our many visitors.”
The opening of the Cambridge City Centre Lion Yard Premier Inn grows Whitbread’s footprint in the city to four locations and more than 430 bedrooms. Across the UK, the company operates more than 85,500 Premier Inn bedrooms and it believes there is the long-term potential for 125,000 UK rooms.
Ahead of opening the doors Whitbread partnered with innovative community engagement platform ActionFunder to fundraise for local charities working across the city.
Team members employed at the new hotel voted on a shortlist of six charities, four of which were selected to share an allocation of Whitbread’s £10,000 local charity fund for the site. To see the projects funded and their updates please see here.
