I believe that apart from possibly a week or two at the start of the course, they utilize commercial letting from private landlords. In other words they rent a few houses in nearby towns and a group of 4, 5 or 6 of you share the house, each with your own bedroom.
Because of the travelling distance, it is important that there are enough people with their own transport in each of the property locations, so that you can share lifts. An early excercise in team building perhaps? I believe that the group then share the petrol/running costs on whatever basis they agree. Failing that I suppose you share a taxi each day.
On the subject of what happens at the end of the training, I think this is a vitally important point.
Far too many people labour under the illusion that once you have a CPL/IR and 250 hours, you are somehow just what airlines are looking for. This (for the most part) really isn't the case and never has been. Historically, recognised approved training courses that led to cadet entry programmes in a few airline companies, enabled a few aspirants to utilize the recognised training programme, to transistion to an airline first officer programme.
Without the benefit of these programmes, aspirant airline pilots, would normally require an absolute minimum of 700 hours, (and usually many hundreds if not thousands of hours more,) through general aviation type work. Then they would find themselves in competition with military leavers, and career changers for whatever jobs became available.
Changes that came about with the introduction of JAR, removed some anomolies in the UK licencing regime, that brought the requirements for licence issue more into line with those that existed in much of the rest of the world. This reduced the hour requirement for a CPL down to the 200 hour level. It also meant the CPL was the benchmark requirement for most aerial work jobs, such as flight instruction (which previously could be undertaken with only a private licence in the UK.)
This caused many to believe that airlines who sought experienced applicants previously, would now beat a path to their door when they only had 200 hours. Apart from one or two vocal CEO's who saw this as a loophole that helped them get one step further to eliminating the F/O's role completely, it was just nonsense. Many airlines did introduce or expand their cadet programmes to take low houred entrants, but rightly, and as they had always done these cadets came from full time, integrated and recognised training establishments that the companies themselves maintained a relationship with.
So back to my point what happens at the end of the training?
Well hopefully you have your CPL/IR with your ATPL ground examinations completed. You have an MCC/AQC type (Airline CRM) course completed. and then what?
Does the FTO open the window and throw its new fledgings into the sky to the chant of "fly my little ones" as most of them fall to the ground? Does the FTO have a number of airline customers who recognise and integrate with it's training programme, so that some/many/most of the fledglings are taken under the wing of the airline for further training?
Where I think this training provider does stand out is at this end of the market. Yes it is a commercial business that must make a profit in order to stay in business, and as such will spin it's marketing to ensure that remains the case. Yes it will project a rosy future when conventional wisdom may from time to time be less optimistic. However as long as it continues to maintain a relationship with it's end user airline customers, then that is where the advantage lies.
As and when any upturn comes in the economy generally, and specifically as it might affect pilot recruitment, then you will see more experienced pilots achieving renewed employment or better placements. You will see more military leavers being recruited and you will see more GA pilots moving up through the system. However you will also see an acceleration in these types of integrated programmes as more cadets are brought through the system.
The difficulty is always going to be with 200 hour CPL/IR holders who don't have this type of recognised programme to assist them. There is a lot of competition out there. There always has been, and in evolving ways there always will be. It has always been about finding that advantage that will make you stand out, or seem attractive at the right time. Anybody with the very aspirational and very difficult aim of finding an airline placement with only a couple of hundred hours under their belt, needs to ask themselves seriously, where might those advantages be found?