Premier Inn, the UK’s largest and fastest growing hotel brand, today unveiled its plans for its most ambitious hotel development ever: the first ever hotel on the moon.

A 43,500 square feet site has been purchased and designers and engineers have been working on the blueprints and design for the first lunar hotel that Premier Inn estimates could be constructed and opened within 25 years.

Patrick Dempsey, MD of Premier Inn said: “Given the pace of space exploration and transportation possibilities beyond earth’s atmosphere, we feel that it is now more feasible than ever to expect travel to and from the moon to become a common occurrence within the next 20-30 years. Given that, we wanted to steal a march on our rivals and be the first hotel chain to offer people the chance to have very comfortable and affordable lunar accommodation and get the same experience of the Premier Inn brand on the moon as they do on earth. We recently became the first budget hotel chain to open in Dubai and whereas the moon is obviously a considerable step further, it does show our commitment to offer customers a choice of Premier Inn wherever the location.”

Alex Flach, Premier Inn’s Construction Director, has been heading up a special team working in conjunction with Dr John Griffiths, freelance lecturer of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, to address the many issues of building on the moon’s surface and providing customers with a comfortable stay. Flach added: “The challenges are unique and no doubt as we learn more about the moon from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaisance Orbitor mission* scheduled to launch in October 2008, we will adapt and improve our designs further.”

Whether it be for business or leisure travel, Premier Inn is offering potential visitors to the moon the chance to register their interest in its lunar hotel from Thursday 22nd May 2008 via its website.


* The Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter is the first mission of NASA’S Robotic Lunar Exploration Program, designed to map the surface of the moon and characterize future landing sites in terms of terrain roughness, usable resources, and radiation environment with the ultimate goal of facilitating the return of humans to the moon.