The hotel chain thinks we’re all cheapskates, so it’s cutting its rooms (and price) in half.
What it means: Here’s a question for you: when you stay in a hotel, do you care more about how nice the room is or how much it costs? Whitbread, which is the company that owns the Premier Inn hotel chain, thinks it’s the latter. They’re creating hotel rooms which are just 8.5 meters squared (that’s just bigger than the size of a double bed). The rooms will have an ensuite bathroom and TV (flatscreen, obvs) squeezed in and will cost just £19 (standard rooms cost about 40-50 quid).
So now we’ve sorted out your next holiday accommodation (you can thank us later), WTF has this got to do with the economy? Well, a penny-pinching population might suggest that we’re all feeling a little poorer now than we once did, or that at least one stereotype about millennials (who now make up a big share of the working-age population) is right, and more people are cutting back on material things to have more cash for experiences.
Of course, the mini-rooms could be less for our benefit as consumers (aka buyers) and more for the benefit of businesses like Premier Inn, who perhaps are figuring that by packing more people into the same space, they can get more bang for their buck (especially if all those extra people start buying Premier Inn meals and other extras). And by providing a cheap and cheerful alternative to more expensive hotel rooms, Premier Inn might be hoping to win more customers from its rivals.
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