UK hotel and restaurant group Whitbread said it will invest about £100mln (EUR 128mln) to open nine new Premier Inn hotels and five new pub restaurants after securing a string of property deals. The announcement came a week after the company said it was acquire 21 hotels, currently operating as Express by Holiday Inn, from hospitality company Mitchells & Butlers. Those hotels will be rebranded under the Premier Inn Logo.
UK hotel and restaurant group Whitbread said it will invest about £100mln (EUR 128mln) to open nine new Premier Inn hotels and five new pub restaurants after securing a string of property deals. The announcement came a week after the company said it was acquire 21 hotels, currently operating as Express by Holiday Inn, from hospitality company Mitchells & Butlers. Those hotels will be rebranded under the Premier Inn Logo.
Specifically, Whitbread said it had signed five new joint sites where a Premier Inn will be built alongside a new Beefeater or Table Table pub restaurants. In London, the opening of two new standalone Premier Inn hotels with integrated restaurant will add more than 500 rooms, in a move that Whitbread said would sustain Premier Inn's position as the largest hotel chain in London with at least 8,500 rooms by the 2012 London Olympics. The remaining two stand-alone sites will be on Fox Street, in Preston, and High Fishergate, Doncaster.
'This is bright news from Whitbread in increasingly gloomy economic times,' said Whitbread property director Mark Anderson.'We have disciplined targets for growth. These investments demonstrate that we are well on our way to delivering them. For us, it's more a case of opportunity bites than credit crunch.' Anderson added that Whitbread’s property team is continuing to identify prime sites for development across the UK and Ireland as it forges ahead with its expansion plans.
