Plans to build another Premier Inn on Marcham Road, Abingdon, approved

Last week, the Vale of the White Horse District Council approved plans that would see an 85-bedroom hotel being built in Abingdon.

The four-story hotel will be located next door to Tesco on Marcham Road, where the superstores old garden centre was previously located.

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The initial application was put forward in 2019 by Travelodge, however, these plans were later amended and adopted by the firm's rival budget hotel company Premier Inn.

This is not the first hotel to be established on the busy Marcham Road - Premier Inn already have another hotel up and running on the street less than a mile away from its new site.

The new site hopes to provide six full-time jobs for people in the area, as well as a further 18 part-time jobs.

The hotel will be complete a restaurant as well as 71 car parking spaces, as well as an area for bike storage.

Plans for the hotel that were initially submitted in 2016, and again in 2018 requested the site also be used for a drive-thru restaurant.

However, the plans were turned down.

The 2016 proposal for a drive-thru would building on Zone 3 flood plane land - the 2018 amended plans were not passed as operators believed visibility and signage issues would not be clear enough for passing trade.

In 2019 a final application for the hotel was put forward and after being amended several times over the past two years it was finally approved by the council on November 17.

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Four letters of objection were received about the most recent plans.

The letters raised concerns about the traffic implications, poor design and arguments that there is no need for another hotel in Abingdon.

The need for more hotels in the town, however, was highlighted in the Local Plan 2031, which states the need to encourage more business and leisure to advance the visitor economy.

Approval for the new Premier Inn comes as the hotel chain announced this week it believes it will return to pre-pandemic normality in the new year.

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Whitbread, who owns Premier Inn, said that the chain is beating its rivals on the road to recovery from one of history’s most devastating moments for the hospitality sector.

It is outgrowing the market by more than a dozen percentage points and is outdoing what its own bosses had predicted.

Earlier this year, Premier Inn opened a brand new eight-story, 123-bed hotel in Botley’s West Way shopping centre and a 117-bed hotel in Banbury.