Whitbread raises £54m through sale and leaseback of seven hotels

The deal also includes any restaurants adjacent to the budget hotels, and is expected to be completed by September.

Mark Anderson, commercial and property director for Whitbread said the move would give the group more ‘flexibility and firepower’ to expand and develop its estate through both freehold and leasehold opportunities.

“This is another great deal for Whitbread,” he said. “It demonstrates our focus on actively managing our UK asset base and, in this case, realising value from seven of our 600 plus UK hotels. Ultimately, this is about driving growth as we target delivering even more sites and even better choice for our UK Premier Inn customers.

“Whether through sale and leaseback or the types of deals we are doing on our expansion sites, Whitbread is an extremely active and aggressive developer and manager of its property estate. We are ruthlessly focused on driving the best returns through the intelligent use of our property assets and a dynamic property strategy.”

The sites involved in the deal are:​

Sandhurst Premier Inn & ‘Rackstraw Farm’ Beefeater Grill, Camberley
 Harlow Premier Inn & ‘Harlow Mill’ Beefeater Grill, Harlow
 Norwich Central South Premier Inn & ‘Broadland View’ Brewers Fayre, Norwich
 Chippenham Premier Inn & ‘Cepen Park’ Brewers Fayre, Chippenham
 Worcester Premier Inn & ‘Three Pears’ Beefeater Grill, Worcester
 Hereford Premier Inn & ‘Starting Gate’ Beefeater Grill, Hereford
 Weston Super Mare East Premier Inn & ‘The Pavilion’ Beefeater Grill, Weston Super Mare

Whitbread intends to aggressively push forward with its goal to operate 65,000 rooms within the next five years. It recently announced the acquisition of three Yorkshire hotels​, which will open over the next three years.

BNP Parisbas Real Estate acted on behalf of Whitbread in the sale.