Over the moon: Whitbread and abrdn open Premier Inn at Lion Yard in Cambridge

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.”

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.

More than 7.6 million visits are made to Cambridge annually which are worth over £2 billion 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 per cent every year. The Lion Yard Shopping Centre experiences an average weekly footfall of more than 200,000 people.