Whitbread Hotels & Restaurants acquired a record 1.6 million sq ft of hotel and restaurant space across 48 new hotels during its financial year ending Feb 2014. The scale of acquisitions – which exceeds the total footprint of Westfield’s gigantic Stratford shopping centre in East London – included space for 5,020 new bedrooms across 48 new hotels, with 2,000 of the new bedrooms within the M25.It has also announced planning permissions for two new sites including Farnham, Hampshire and Malvern, Worcestershire, kick starting its 2014 expansion of its secured development pipeline.
Together, these two sites will add an additional 126 new bedrooms to Premier Inn’s secured development pipeline which now stands at more than 10,500 bedrooms.
– Farnham is a 60-bedroom Premier Inn with Beefeater Grill restaurant on Guildford Road.
– Malvern is a 66 bedroom Premier Inn on Townsend Way.
John Bates, Head of Acquisitions UK & Ireland for Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants, said: “Premier Inn is growing and our property team is really packing a punch in terms of acquiring new space. To have secured total hotel and restaurant space during 2013 that’s actually larger than Westfield Stratford is powerful stuff and might surprise a few people. We’re not slowing down though and, with our new hub by Premier Inn compact format, we now have two outstanding property propositions for the market. We want to do more, to deliver against our national network plan and to continue doing value-creating deals with excellent property partners.”
Total Premier Inn expansion over five years is equally compelling: 20,000 new bedrooms opened, 176 new hotels, 38 new restaurants (under the Beefeater Grill, Brewers Fayre, Table Table and Taybarns brands) and a total of approximately 7 million sq ft of total new space.
Whitbread Hotels & Restaurants currently has more than 54,000 UK Premier Inn bedrooms open and trading. It has a target to increase the number of Premier Inn and hub by Premier Inn bedrooms across the UK to 75,000 by 2018.
