Whitbread PLC, the parent of hotel brands Premier Inn and Hub by Premier, sees a considerable opportunity to grow its portfolio in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Speaking in an interview with Hotel News Now, Whitbread's Mark Anderson, managing director, property and international, said it is possible to "grow our network to around 110,000 rooms, based on demand today without substantial growth in demand in the U.K. hotel market, so that gives us headroom of about 30,000 rooms we can still add."
“We’ve been carrying on signing sites and buying land in the last year or 18 months … since the pandemic started to impact, [and] that will get us to about 90,000 [rooms], so we’ve still got an opportunity of about 19,000 bedrooms beyond those that we have open or in development in our committed pipeline,” he said.
Whitbread has several U.K. properties already in the works, with new hotels in Manchester, Edinburgh, Blackpool, Bournemouth, Plymouth, Bury St Edmunds, Isle of Wight, Saffron Walden, Oxford, Thurso, Banbury, Pickering and Scarborough. The company will also open two hotels in Glasgow and several in London.
Published on June 17, Whitbread’s first quarter earnings showed positive forward-booking trends that have been fueled by both pent-up travel demand and relaxed restrictions on international travel from the U.K.
Hotels in the U.K. were permitted to fully reopen on May 17, and Anderson said his portfolio has benefited significantly.
“We have traded very well in the last four weeks," he said. "We’ve just updated the city [of London] on our quarter-one trading update, our statement, and we’ve seen some good demand come into the network over the last few weeks, so that’s giving us real encouraging signs.”
Watch the video above for more insights from Whitbread and Premier Inn.