Overall ranking: 3 (31)
Hotel ranking: 1 (10)

Grant Hearn - Snapshot
Grant Hearn is chief executive of Travelodge, the fourth largest hotel group in the UK and the second largest budget brand after Whitbread’s PremierTravel Inn.

Grant Hearn - Career guide
Grant Hearn, who was born in 1958, spent more than a decade with Trusthouse Forte, where his father Dennis was deputy chief executive in the early 1990s. Hearn was deputy managing director for Forte Crest (overseeing 12 London and 15 provincial hotels) and executive director for the London region when he left in March 1995 to become operations director for Whitbread’s Country Club Hotel Group, later renamed the Whitbread Hotel Company. 

By the end of the year, he was promoted to chief operating officer after Whitbread bought Scotts Hotels and the Marriott franchise for the UK. In December 1996, he became the first managing director of Whitbread’s rapidly growing budget hotel brand, Travel Inn (now Premier Travel Inn).

In April 2000, Grant Hearn left to become managing director for the UK and Ireland at Hilton International. Three years later he returned to the budget hotel sector when he became chief executive of Travelodge. In November 2004, he also took on Little Chef (which venture capital firm Permira had acquired with Travelodge from the Compass Group) until its sale in October 2005.

Grant Hearn - What we think
Grant Hearn has always played with the biggest boys on the block, and his expansionary skills have ensured he has made his mark on the hotel landscape. Most notably, Hearn has driven the development of the two leading budget brands, Premier Travel Inn and Travelodge.

Hearn was lured from Forte to Whitbread and quickly became the first managing director of the budget Travel Inn brand, which had grown rapidly to 143 sites since its launch in 1987.

By April 1999, the brand had grown to 213 sites and Hearn announced plans to double the number of bedrooms within five years in a £300m expansion drive.

In early 2003, Hearn became chief executive of Travelodge, the brand his cousin Alan Hearn had launched in the UK in 1985 at Trusthouse Forte, which had bought the US Travelodge business in 1973.

By mid-2006, Hearn had boosted Travelodge numbers from 220 to 291 (including three in Spain and nine Irish franchises) with nearly 18,500 bedrooms and six million customers a year. For the next three years he intends to open around 50 new properties a year – equivalent to opening a new hotel every 10 days. By the first quarter of 2007, the group expects to have 20,000 bedrooms, rising to 32,000 by 2011.

Hearn’s mission is to make hotels an attractive and affordable proposition for the one-third of Britons who do not use them and the 85% who view domestic breaks as too expensive.

In December last year, Travelodge announced £20m-worth of price cuts to offer 500,000 bedrooms at £26 a night and another 100,000 for £10 which, in tandem with a new online booking system, helped boost sales by 19%.

Hearn has rattled a few cages by accusing rivals of rip-off prices. He took full-page newspaper ads accusing several big brands of misleading customers by advertising price-per-person rather than price-per-room rates, while leafleting competitors’ car parks asking its customers if they were being ripped off.
 
Hearn has been the only hotelier to actively fight the proposed bed tax and raised a petition of more than 90,000 signatures from customers, as well as actively supporting Caterer and Hotelkeeper’s “Say No To Bed Tax” campaign.

Recent innovations have included the appointment of the world’s first director of sleep and trials of a window transfer system (so guests can wake up to their chosen view) and of a £26-a-night mobile bedroom or Travelpod delivered to festival-goers.

Hearn and his top management team have elected to stay on and finish the job under new owner Dubai Investment Capital, which bought Travelodge in August 2006.

Hearn is a fellow of the HCIMA and a trustee of Hospitality Action, which tackles drug and alcohol abuse in the industry.

Grant Hearn – Further information

Travelodge profile on CatererSearch

Travelodge official website

Travelodge profile on Wikipedia

Travelodge profile on Google Finance

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