Hotel and restaurant operator Whitbread aims to replicate its “UK success story” by growing its Premier Inn budget hotel brand in Germany, and has announced a €50m (£45m) deal to grow its German portfolio.
The London-listed company has taken on 15 hotels in Germany currently operating under the Centro, Ninetynine and Fourside brands, eight of which are open and seven in the pipeline.
The transaction will take the company’s Premier Inn business in Germany to 68 open or committed hotels. Its current pipeline of 10,000 rooms is roughly a 1% market share, the company said, and its “line-of-sight” pipeline of 60,000 rooms would equal around 5%.
“The German hotel market has many attractive characteristics,” Whitbread said. “The market is a third larger than the UK and even more fragmented, with almost three-quarters of the market still consisting of small independent operators, which are experiencing a structural decline, to the benefit of branded hotels.”
The company described its ability to take on these 15 hotels as a “clear sign of competitor distress in the market”.
The company announced the international expansion plans alongside interim results for the six months to 27 August. Revenue was down by three-quarters year-on-year at £250.8m, with a £724.7m pretax loss. The company has launched a consultation in the UK that could see as many as 6,000 jobs lost.
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