Grant Hearn: A sojourn from Sleepy Hollow

5.15am

The alarm goes off to Radio 5's Wake up To Money programme. After a shower, his wife drives him to the station for the 6.17am train from Walton on Thames, Surrey to London's Waterloo. On the train, he catches up with emails and news on his Blackberry. "I am an absolute news junkie. I am keen to see on Google alerts if Travelodge or any of our competitors are in the news," says Mr Hearn, who joined the 330-strong budget hotel chain as chief executive in March 2003 from the Hilton Group, where he was managing director for UK and Ireland. Before then, he was managing director of Whitbread under its former name of Travel Inn and chief operating officer for Marriott.

He also checks for emails from Travelodge's owners, Dubai International Capital, which acquired the chain for £675m in 2006 from the private equity firm Permira and are four hours ahead.

At 6.50am, the train arrives in London and he takes a cab to Travelodge's London office in Holborn. He has a cup of coffee and a slice of toast and holds an informal meeting with Jon Mortimore, Travelodge's finance director, to discuss, among other things, how the chain is performing.

Mr Hearn clears some emails and jumps in a cab bound for Paddington, where he catches a train to Cardiff for the first of several visits to its hotels. Mr Hearn says he always forewarns hotel managers that he is coming. "I have been in the business 30-odd years and quite often I know when I walk in the door whether I think it is right or not." He heads out on the road to visit its hotels every two weeks.

On the train, he reads the briefing on the hotels he is to visit, including details on their margins and customer satisfaction, as well as the history of the manager. He also catches up with the latest market research reports. "We do a lot of market research, and one of the things I am always fascinated to read is how customers' expectations are changing," says Mr Hearn, who has three children.

10.45am

He arrives in Cardiff, meets Paul Anstey, Travelodge's operations director, and heads to its Cardiff Central hotel, which is about 10 minutes from the station. "It is a hotel we have been spending some money on. It is a very popular property, particularly at the weekend," says Mr Hearn. There, they also meet the new hotel manager for Cardiff Central and the new district manager for Wales.

Upon arriving, he is "very unhappy" with the way the contractor had left the lift which is being fixed. Mr Hearn says: "We got straight on to the guy for the construction of the facility and got him to make sure that the contractor knew it was unacceptable to leave things like this."

The discussion then moves on to Cardiff Central's bar café area. The café's toaster, coffee, plates and cutlery need to be moved closer together to improve the flow of customers for breakfast. The team then checks out the rooms that have been refurbished. This gives Mr Hearn a chance to chat with the hotel manager and district manager about his and Travelodge's expectations. "The [hotel] managers need to be focused on the things they are responsible for. They do not have responsibility for the top line – that is driven centrally. But they do have responsibility for margins of the business and looking after their customers and people [staff]."

To improve people management, Travelodge makes 25 per cent of each hotel's staff key players. Managers are measured against keeping turnover of those key staff below 10 per cent each year. "We recognise that the hotel industry is fairly transient, but we have many employees who have been there for more than 25 years," says Mr Hearn.

12.30pm

After one and a half hours in Cardiff, Mr Hearn and Mr Anstey head to its hotel in Pencoed, Bridgend. The manager comes in for high praise. "The office at the Bridgend hotel is absolutely immaculate and, of course, the hotel is like the office. There are only five staff in the hotel. They obviously take enormous pride in their Travelodge," says Mr Hearn.

He adds that the hotel has only had one complaint in two years. After 40 minutes chatting to the Bridgend manager, the two directors jump back in the car and head to Bristol. On the way, they stop off in a Whitbread pub restaurant for a bite to eat and to "check out the competition". Travelodge itself has integrated about 60 bar cafés into its own chain.

3pm

The manager at its Bristol Central hotel is a former employee of the supermarket Sainsbury's, which fits Mr Hearn's recruitment policy. "We get a lot of managers from supermarkets, such as Tesco and Sainsbury's. We would always prefer to hire from retailers than from a hotel company because often hotel people think they are stepping down from a four-star to a budget and that is not what we want."

Mr Hearn's philosophy is that Travel-odge manag-ers are "not typical hoteliers, we are retailers of sleep". Sleep is a big deal at Travelodge. It renamed its headquarters in Thame, Oxfordshire, Sleepy Hollow in 2003 and it has a director of sleep, a position it created two years ago.

Mr Hearn chats with the female manager at Bristol Central about what is working and what is not, as well as things Sainsbury's are doing well. Mr Hearn, who admits he is a stickler for detail and meticulously tidy at work, says that the hotel has an issue with too many refrigeration units, six in fact, in the kitchen, which are throwing out too much heat. He then chats to the manager about how some of the lighting and décor in some rooms is a "bit strange".

4.30pm

He gets on the train back to London and makes a lot of notes on the hotels visited. "Everyone expects my hotel visit memos. Some of it is: 'We are missing a trick here, and where are the opportunities'," says Mr Hearn. Travelodge's latest financial figures suggest it is not missing many tricks. For the year to 31 December, privately held Travelodge grew its sales by 20 per cent to £243.8m and Ebitda by 30 per cent to £55.8m.

6.30pm

Back in London, he catches up with his wife and they head to the Tate Modern for the exhibition by Cy Twombly, the American artist. They also grab dinner at the South Bank gallery before jumping back on the train and arriving in Walton on Thames around 10.30pm.

Mr Hearn says Travelodge is not seeing an impact of the credit crunch and consumer downturn. "If I lived in a cave and did not read newspapers, looking at our numbers I would say, 'no' [impact]." Travelodge is on track to add 4,000 rooms this year. "We are seeing corporate customers coming our way," says Mr Hearn.

Out of the office

It was Grant Hearn's 50th birthday yesterday and – unlike many politicians – he is honest enough to admit that bands big in the Eighties, such as Dire Straits and Genesis, are on his iPod. However, he also likes younger bands The National and Glasvegas, particularly their "Geraldine" track. "I always check out the best in store on iTunes," he says.

Another passion is rugby, his "main sport", but he also follows Chelsea Football Club. As for the Olympics, he "loved" watching the cycling, particularly the four-man event where team GB won gold. Travelodge aims to be the biggest hotel operator in London by the 2012 games and wants to have 1,000 hotels by 2020.

Mr Hearn joined the board of Visit London at the start of this year, and made a new year resolution: "I said to my wife, we would go to the theatre every single month and to all the art exhibitions we could."

His last holiday was a short trip to Cornwall and, for the record, he didn't stay in a Travelodge.

The last book he read was Engleby by Sebastian Faulks.

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