How the Premier Inn at the junction of Coldham's Lane and Newmarket Road will look

THE number of hotel rooms in the city centre is set to rocket with more than 1,300 new rooms in the pipeline.

John Bates, head of acquisitions for UK and Ireland for Premier Inn

Over the last five years Cambridge has seen an explosion in the number of hotels planned for the city with many of them expected to be built in the next 
few years.

The current supply of hotels with more than 20 rooms yields a total of 2,000 rooms within 10 miles of the city centre. If all planned hotels are built in Cambridge, it would mean a further 1,377 rooms.

From Addenbrooke’s to the Science Park, including a junction with two hotels facing each other in 
Newmarket Road, hotels could be popping up all over the city.

Despite the recession and a healthy choice of hotels, recent figures show Cambridge has a higher occupancy rate, 73 per cent, than Liverpool, Newcastle, Bristol and Cardiff, and is well ahead of the national average of 66.8 per cent.

The budget hotel chain Premier Inn already has two hotels in Cambridge and another with planning permission ready to go at the site of the old Intercell House site in Coldham’s Lane, but the company is still keen to consider more options in the city.

“Cambridge is a growing city. We want to support that growth through the investment and jobs we are bringing as well as benefit from it in terms of having successful and well-occupied hotels,” said John Bates, head of acquisitions for the UK and Ireland.

“We are actively investing in Cambridge because it has all of the things we are looking for: strong demand, a vibrant and growing leisure and business customer market, a healthy local economy, a good labour market, and sites in locations that work for us.

“We think that’s highly achievable and are focused on making it happen.”

A spokesman for 
Travelodge which will 
open a hotel in Newmarket Road in 2012, said the city remained a target as there was “definitely potential”.

One of the most recent additions to the city’s hotel portfolio is the one set for North West Cambridge, the 3,000-home university development on the outskirts of the city.

A 130-room hotel is planned for the site, for which a planning 
application was submitted in September.

Roger Taylor, project director, said there were many 4-star hotels in the area and this was likely to be a 3-star operation.

He said: “It’s going to be mainly for the needs of the university. We know the kind of operators out there who will be interested and we will putting the idea of a lease to them.

“We think it is going to 
be very attractive.”

Among other hotels in the pipeline for Cambridge are a 296-room Radisson Blu at the Science Park, a 157-room O’ Callaghan hotel for Station Road, and a 19-room extension to Ashley Hotel in Chesterton Road.

Shara Ross, chairman of the Cambridge Hoteliers’ Association and general manager of Hotel Felix in Huntingdon Road, said the city could not support so many rooms.

“If you speak to any consultant they will tell you that there is a growth potential in Cambridge. It is seen as a city that’s ripe for growth in all sorts of areas,” she said.

“But there are too many bedrooms for the amount of business coming into the city and I hate to see that happen in Cambridge.

“We are on the edge of it happening here as we become ‘bedroomed-out’. The market is weakened and nobody does particularly well. People see the industry as a cash cow and wrongly so.”

Ms Ross said the same thing has happened in cities like York, Leeds and Norwich.

She warned variety in the market could be “squeezed out” and lead to the “death of the ‘bed and breakfast’.

Ian Sandison, of Love Cambridge, a group which promotes the city centre, said: “A healthy mix of hotels that offer a range of prices is only a good 
thing for a vibrant city like Cambridge.

“We need more medium to lower-end accommodation as if you can stay in Cambridge for a lower 
price you will spend longer in the city which we would only encourage.”