Hotel chain Premier Inn has confirmed jobs will be lost as it moves its telephone reservation call centre from the UK to Egypt.

Staff based at Houghton Hall Business Park in Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire, were told on Tuesday that 88 roles would be made redundant, affecting 59 full-time positions and a number of other people part-time staff.

Half of its telephone reservation service is already handled by a call centre based in Manila, Philippines, but the company said the vast majority of customers now booked online.

A spokesperson for Whitbread, which owns the chain and is based at the same Houghton Regis site, said: “We can confirm that we have begun a consultation process which will involve proposed changes to some of our contact centre teams.”