Whitbread secures planning for five more hotels
The hotels, a mixture of conversions and new-builds, will add another 465 bedrooms to Whitbread's hotel business and will help the company reach its target of operating 75,000 bedrooms by 2018.
New Premier Inns are planned for Archway in London (157-bedroom); Bideford in Devon (70-bedroom); Haverford West in Pembrokeshire (59-bedroom) and Hitchen in Hertfordshire (60-bedroom) with the first an office to hotel conversion and the latter three all new-builds.
A new Hub by Premier Inn, the company's third, is planned for Great Tower Street in London. The 119-bedroom hotel, to open in a converted office, will be the second of Whitbread's new smaller budget brand hotel to open in London, following its first in St Martin's Lane, which will open at the end of 2014.
John Bates, head of acquisitions UK & Ireland for Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants, said: “Premier Inn is the UK’s largest budget hotel brand and our growth reflects the ongoing demand for the quality, consistency and value we can offer our customers.
"Our property team is working hard to bring in new sites in London and across the country and sustain the strength of our development pipeline. This latest cluster of planning permissions to give us five viable and deliverable new sites is excellent news and will ensure we maintain our impressive growth momentum. We continue to be hungry for the best sites and to keep on adding to our pipeline.”
The Premier Inn at Bideford's Atlantic Park will be built alongside a Brewers Fayre while the hotel on Fishguard Road in Haverfordwest will open alongside a new Marston's pub.
Whitbread, which currently has more than 54,000 Premier Inn bedrooms in operation across the country, hopes to open all five hotels by 2016 with some planned to open at the end of next year through to 2015.
