Swindon to become home to all-electric Premier Inn hotel

Currently under construction on a vacant brownfield site in Regent Street, the five-storey 195-bedroom hotel is the first Premier Inn to be designed without a connection to a natural gas supply.

 

Instead, the council say the hotel will be fully heated and powered by grid energy generated from renewable sources and by on-site solar panels.

 

Alex Flach, UK Development Director, said: “If we are to achieve our target of becoming a net zero business by 2040 we need to find a replacement for natural gas across our estate.  This is a considerable challenge as we rely on natural gas to heat water in our network of hotels and power many of our restaurant kitchens across the country.

“The new all-electric Premier Inn is designed to give us everything we need to run an operationally successful hotel.  A combination of a thermally efficient building and on-site energy recovering and generating systems has given us the confidence to remove fossil fuels from the new Premier Inn.

“It is a bold and necessary proof of concept which has the potential to inform the specification of our newbuild hotels.  With more than 82,000 rooms currently available for our customers across the UK and Ireland, and the potential to grow our network to 110,000 rooms in time, the impact of what we will learn from the all-electric hotel is huge.” 

The council say as well as bringing new jobs and a boost to the local economy, the new Premier Inn hotel will have a reduced environmental footprint.

 

Built to the highest construction standards (BREEAM ‘Excellent’ rating), it will feature:

Cllr David Renard, Leader of Swindon Borough Council, said:“Our town has a proud history of innovation so I am delighted Whitbread has chosen Swindon as the first place in which to build its first ‘all-electric’ hotel.

“The redevelopment of this brownfield site is a welcome boost for our town centre economy, bringing new jobs and investment into the local area. The fact it will be built to the highest construction standards and be fully heated and powered by grid energy generated from renewable sources, and by on-site solar panels, is fantastic news as it fits in with the council’s own net zero ambitions and shows how businesses can play their part in the collective effort to tackle climate change.”

Members of the public can find out more about these tools and resources, helping people and organisations across Swindon to ‘Be the Change’ on climate change, at http://ow.ly/96q850JTO6O

 

Whitbread says it is committed to being a positive force in the communities in which it operates. The company’s sustainability programme, ‘Force for Good’ is focused on enabling people to live and work well and is built around three pillars of Opportunity, Community and Responsibility. 

 

More information on the Force For Good programme is available at www.whitbread.co.uk/sustainability.