Alison Brittain, CEO at British hotel firm Whitbread PLC, which owns and manages the Premier Inn chain, is set to retire at the end of its current financial year, according to a news release.
Her replacement, to begin in early January 2023, will be Dominic Paul, current CEO for the U.K. and Ireland at Domino’s Pizza Group.
Paul is returning to Whitbread. Between June 2016 and November 2019, he was CEO of coffee-store chain Costa Coffee, which Whitbread sold to Coca-Cola in November 2018 for £3.9 billion ($5.1 billion), a deal that was completed in August 2018 and a sale price that represented a multiple of 16.4 times Costa’s full-year 2018 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
Before that, Paul held executive positions at cruise line Royal Caribbean International and airline British Midland International.
Brittain started the CEO role at Whitbread in January 2016 after her appointment was announced in May of the previous year. She came to the hotel group following senior roles at two banks, Lloyds, where she was group director of retail, and Santander U.K., where she was executive director of retail distribution.
The Times newspaper pointed out that with her resignation, there now are only nine women heading up companies in the Financial Times “Footsie” 100 index on the London Stock Exchange.
On an earnings results conference call earlier this month, Brittain revealed hotel accommodations at Premier Inn already was 40% booked for the next quarter running through the summer and accommodation revenue stood at 31% ahead of pre-pandemic numbers across its entire portfolio and 21.3% head of pre-pandemic numbers in the U.K. With 820 hotels and more than 80,000 rooms, Premier Inn is the U.K.’s largest hotel chain by property count.
Brittain and Chief Financial Officer Hemant Patel added on the June 15 earnings call that for the next full-year trading cycle, revenue per available room is predicted to be 22.7% above pre-pandemic numbers in regional U.K. and 10.8% above in London.
For the same period but for only its accommodations’ revenue, RevPAR is predicted to be up 14.6% in regional U.K. and up 1.8% in London, for an 11.1% improvement across the firm's British portfolio.
Brittain said Premier Inn's performance has been driven by a focus on commercial and operational considerations, continued popularity for the brand in its key markets, almost total direct distribution and a general contraction of U.K. supply.
In Whitbread’s news release, Adam Crozier, chairman of the board, said “[Brittain] has guided the company brilliantly … developing and then selling Costa for £3.9 billion, growing and innovating our award-winning U.K. customer proposition, firmly establishing Germany to be a substantial engine of future growth and latterly ably steering the group and leading our 35,000 colleagues through the pandemic.”
As of press time, Whitbread’s stock was trading on the London Stock Exchange at 25.62 pounds sterling ($31.30) per share, down approximately 14.5% year to date.