Whitbread’s place in the hotel market
Whitbread’s biggest subsidiary, Premier Inn, is the largest hotel brand in the United Kingdom, with the number of Premier Inn hotels in the UK reaching 841 in 2021/22. The company was founded by Whitbread in 1987 to compete with Travelodge. Whitbread bought Premier Lodge in 2004 and merged it with Travel Inn to establish the current business under the name “Premier Travel Inn” which was eventually shortened to “Premier Inn” in 2007. In 2021/22, the average room rate of Premier Inn hotels in the UK was 56.7 British pounds per night. The majority of Premier Inn’s hotels are in the UK and Ireland; however, thanks to an expansion of the brand in Germany, the total number of Premier Inn hotel rooms worldwide exceeded 82 thousand by the end of the financial year March 2022.Whitbread’s food service brands
Whitbread announced its sale of Costa Coffee, the world’s second-largest coffee chain, to the Coca-Cola company in 2018. Nowadays, the vast majority of Whitbread’s global segment revenue comes from accommodation. In 2021/22, accommodation revenues accounted for nearly 1.19 billion British pounds. That same year, food and beverage revenues were less than half of that figure. Nevertheless, Whitbread continues to have a foothold in the full service restaurant industry with companies such as Beefeater in its portfolio.The market size of the full service restaurant sector in the UK exceeded nine billion British pounds in 2021. Meanwhile, in 2022, the market size of the restaurant industry in the UK was forecast to reach 17.8 billion British pounds, which would represent an increase of 6.6 billion pounds over the previous year.
