NEWS FROM PREMIER INN

PREMIER INN VOTED AS TOP IN CUSTOMER SERVICE

Premier Inn has been voted as top in the customer service stakes in the Leisure and Tourism category, by the Institute of Customer Service Customer Satisfaction Awards.

The award highlights Premier Inn as a leader in the field, seeing the UK’s largest and fastest growing hotel brand fighting off competition from mid-market hotels, such as Marriott and Hilton.

The award winners were the top performers in the UK Customer Satisfaction Index, which asked more than 24,000 people to rate how well or badly companies and organisations performed in 12 key public and private sectors.

Robert Crawford, Executive Director of the ICS said: ‘Most awards are judged by a panel of experts, but the ICS Customer Satisfaction Awards are based on the views of real customers. Premier Inn displays real consistency in providing excellent customer service to all of its guests and this award recognises this.’

Paul Flaum, chief operating officer for Premier Inn, said: ‘We are delighted to have won this award – customer service is something we pride ourselves on and to be recognised for this by our customers is a great achievement.’

Premier Inn is so committed to guest satisfaction they offer a unique Good Night Guarantee at each of their 558 hotels across the UK - meaning any guest who is not 100% satisfied with their stay will receive a full refund.

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For more information please contact Frank PR on
0207 693 6999 or email premierinn@frankpr.it

Notes to editors:
About Premier Inn…
Premier Inn, is the UK’s largest and fastest-growing hotel brand with 563 budget hotels and more than 38,000 rooms across the UK. Premier Inn bedrooms are 22m² and feature en-suite bathroom, TV, and internet access for business guests.

Premier Inn offers customers a ‘Good Night Guarantee’ of a good quality room, comfortable surroundings and friendly service, which is unique amongst Britain’s leading hotel chains.
Premier Inn was the first Britain-wide hotel group to sign up with national tourist board VisitBritain; this means Premier Inn is now part of a new quality assessment scheme, specially created for budget accommodation.

A joint venture with Emirates has seen the Premier Inn brand develop in the Gulf region, with its first budget hotel in Dubai in Spring 2008. Premier Inn also has a joint venture with Emar-MGF to roll out 80 budget hotels in India by 2017. On a domestic front, Premier Inn is set to be the largest provider of budget hotels in London by the time of the 2012 Olympics.

Premier Inn has won the following awards:
Best Budget Hotel at the Business Traveller Awards 2008
Leading Economy brand in the JD Power European Economy Hotel Guest Satisfaction Survey 2008
Most improved brand by the BDRC British Hotel Guest Survey 2008.
Winner of the HolidayCheck Awards 2008
Best Business Hotel Chain at the Business Travel World Awards 2008
Institute of Customer Service Award for Hotels and Leisure

For more information please visit www.premierinn.com

About ICS…
The Institute of Customer Service (ICS) is the professional body for customer service whose primary purpose is to lead customer service performance and professionalism.
The ICS launched the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) in 2007 and it is repeated every six months. This latest UKCSI is based on a sample of 24,000 adults surveyed online in late 2008.
It measured 20 individual factors of customer satisfaction that can be grouped into five attributes: professionalism, problem solving, timeliness, quality/ efficiency and easy to do business with.
Each of these factors is weighted according to how important customers said they were in the ICS research Customer priorities: what customers really want and the weighted satisfaction scores are used to produce the Index. This makes the scores exceptionally robust as they are not simply a percentage of respondents who answered a question in the positive or negative – they are derived from a weighted index of multiple questions.
The UKCSI results are determined on a geographically and demographically representative sample of UK adults and data is collected for all organisations with a high market share in each segment of the private sector and the main players in the public sector.

The UKCSI has been welcomed by BSI British Standards. It says: “We believe it is an important step in improving customer satisfaction in the UK as well as a useful tool for consumers and business. Customer satisfaction is a key area of standardisation for BSI and our own work in this area potentially assists organisations to improve their position in the index.”