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The Gatwick Travelodge becomes a Hyatt, no, wait, a Moxy, no, a Radisson RED ….

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We get press releases most days about new hotels which have been signed but won’t be opening for 3-4 years. We delete them.

Part of the reason is that, frankly, who cares if a hotel is opening somewhere in 3-4 years?

Secondly, a very high proportion of these projects never actually happen. If they do happen, the name above the door may well change.

The Hotel du Palais in Biarritz opened this week as a Hyatt after a massive renovation. In 2016 I told you that Four Seasons would be running it. Point made. I still get questions about the InterContinental Venice which was announced exactly five years ago.

A recent Business Traveller story pushed this to the extreme.

As BT wrote here, a Radisson RED hotel has been announced to open at Gatwick Airport later this year. An image is above.

Obviously if a hotel is opening later this year then it must already exist, so I went off digging. The story was very complicated.

I went off to the website of the hotel operator, Axcel Group. The hotel is there ….

Radisson Red Gatwick Airport

…. listed as a Moxy. It even has the Moxy logo on the image above the entrance. Clearly the switch from Marriott’s Moxy brand to Radisson RED happened very late in the day.

I went back to the internet and found something even odder.

This hotel was original the Travelodge Gatwick Airport.

Back in June 2020, Axcel announced it was going to become a Hyatt Place. The original Travelodge was to be refurbished “including upgrading rooms and a full renovation of the reception, restaurant and bar areas”.

The freeholder, the railway pension fund, was quoted as saying that it would “benefit from a franchise agreement with one of the world’s leading brands”. Not for long, it seems.

So …. between June 2020 and March 2021, this hotel has gone from a Travelodge to a proposed Hyatt Place to a proposed Moxy to a proposed, potentially finalised, Radisson RED.

It’s all a bit odd.

The original announcement talks about ‘upgrading’ the rooms but fully renovating the public areas. I can’t imagine how an ‘upgrade’ – as opposed to a full gut – of a Travelodge room would get it to Radisson RED standards.

It is possible that Axcel had decided on a very modern design and eventually decided that it was more MOXY than Hyatt Place. It could then be that they decided it was looking pretty good and that Radisson RED was a more upmarket ‘funky’ brand than Moxy.

At the end of the day, unfortunately, the hotel will still look like a Travelodge. Even the artist impression above struggles to make it look exciting. Photos also show that roads run directly in front and behind the hotel.

Let’s hope they do a decent job, because the dual-branded Radisson RED (reviewed here) and Radisson (reviewed here) at Heathrow is quite good.

You can see the Radisson RED Gatwick Airport on the Radisson website here. The opening date is given as 1st June.

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Comments (22)

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  • Chrisasaurus says:
    27 Mar27 March 06:44

    Even without the wipe-clean curtains and awful everything it’s still a travelodge in terms of layout, lack of meeting space, horrid corridors etc

    And the building itself as Rob points out – you can see it’s aTravelodge from your plane before you land,they’re pretty unmistakable!

    • Andrew says:
      27 Mar27 March 07:25

      It doesn’t just say “Travelodge” to me, it says “Trusthouse Forte”. Didn’t they use identical styles of buildings across multiple brands?

      I wonder what the UK hotel industry would be like if Forte Plc still existed. (Obviously Granada eventually gave Rocco him his name back).

      • Secret Squirrel says:
        27 Mar27 March 07:28

        Blimey, Trusthouse Forte… Now that’s a name I have not heard in years 😃

        • Rob says:
          27 Mar27 March 10:23

          I did 2 weeks at the Posthouse in Taunton (just off the motorway junction, may be a HI now?) in 1990. Was the height of sophistication for me at the time and far nicer than my student room – this was part of a work experience scheme.

          • Gavin says:
            27 Mar27 March 21:26

            There’s a HI and a HIX next to each other now, stayed there for a wedding a few years ago.

      • Chrisasaurus says:
        28 Mar28 March 08:16

        Sort of – but they tended to have separation between food and even space, and the accommodation block- thinking of a lot of very similar HIs I’ve stayed at that were all clearly former trusthouses (Washington, MK, Nottingham-Derby)

  • pauldb says:
    27 Mar27 March 07:20

    The hotel has been boarded up for at least five years. I’m pretty sure it will be given a full refurbishment – at least I hope so!

  • Terry Butcher says:
    27 Mar27 March 08:44

    It’s four miles from the airport

    • Alex Sm says:
      27 Mar27 March 12:28

      As long as it has a shuttle bus running, why would one care?

      • The real John says:
        27 Mar27 March 12:42

        If you miss the shuttle (like I did once at 6am) you’ll need to sort out a taxi which may take a bit of time to get there and back.

  • Brian says:
    27 Mar27 March 09:05

    I’m not sure that “it will still look like a Travelodge” after renovation. The hotel seems to have been built as a Mercure 4* property, had meeting rooms and even a leisure centre. Some of the restaurants, all the meeting space and leisure facilities were converted into rooms when Travelodge took over. Given its history a significant majority of the rooms are very traditional in space, layout and bathrooms. Some of the newer rooms do look like Travelodge pre-fabs though.

  • Matarredonda says:
    27 Mar27 March 09:39

    Certainly never built as a Travelodge although I can’t recall its previous incarnations as seem to recall several different franchise’s when using in earlier times.
    Last stayed at it in Early January 2020 so not been boarded up for year’s!
    As a Travelodge rooms had mostly been upgraded during 2018/9 so be interesting to see how it is now w.

    • pauldb says:
      27 Mar27 March 10:07

      I think you and others are talking about the wrong Travelodge. This is not the current one north of the airport, it’s an old one on Church Road south of the airport which has been shut for years (hosting a used car dealer!). I don’t think it was ever called “Central”, was never a Mercury, is not four miles from the airport and was not upgraded in 2018/19 – but apart from that … 🙂

      • Rob says:
        27 Mar27 March 10:08

        It was ‘Central’, or at least I saw a picture captioned with that.

        • Mark says:
          27 Mar27 March 16:32

          The 2014 version of the Travelodge website calls the other one ‘central’ this one is just Gatwick Airport (named as it was the first one).

      • @mkcol says:
        27 Mar27 March 10:59

        Do you mean the one near JetSet House?

      • Matarredonda says:
        27 Mar27 March 11:05

        Think you are correct as the Gatwick Central off Povey Cross Rd is still available to book so would seem incorrect pictures have been used.

  • Russ says:
    27 Mar27 March 12:46

    Just to add The Chequers on the Balcombe Rd Gatwick has just reopened as a Sheraton four points.

  • flyforfun says:
    27 Mar27 March 13:09

    That’s the first hotel I stayed at when I started early morning flights from Gatwick. The fact it was a Travelodge was irrelevant as I took it because it was cheap. False economy. Yes it’s a bed and it was fine for the 8 to 10 hours I was there.

    It was the fact you had to be up at a really early time to make sure you got on one of the shuttle buses that came every 20 or 30 minutes. When it got to me there wasn’t much more standing space left. I could have taken a taxi but that would have eroded the saving on the hotel. That was when I had my lightbulb moment and realised that if you booked early enough you could get decent prices at airport hotels. I’ve stayed in a few of the hotels there now and my preference is for the Block hotel chain. Bit more room than Yotel. Done the Marriot and Hampton and they were fine but I don’t use the bar facilities etc. I just arrive lateish, sleep, shower and go.

  • Kevin D says:
    27 Mar27 March 21:22

    I’m ashamed to say I’ve stayed in many a Travelodge when I was younger. Nothing beats a £6 Easyhotel in Glasgow for a lack of space though! I even went across the road to the Hilton Doubletree and bought some cookies to cheer myself up!

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