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Whitbread hotel boost in London
Evening Standard 8 Apr 2008
Whitbread today revealed a huge expansion of its Premier Inn hotels chain in central London.
It plans to spend some £100 million on 1200 new rooms, which will make it the largest chain in the capital by the time of the Olympics in 2012.
The group has agreed to buy three existing hotels comprising 400 rooms from the Real Hotel Company for £18.5 million. They are the Quality Hotel in Westminster, Comfort Inn in Kensington and Purple Hotel in the City.
Whitbread will spend another £12 million converting the hotels into Premiers. It also has first refusal on the right to buy Real's remaining 12 Purple Hotels if they are put up for sale.
At the same time, Whitbread will build three new hotels at a cost of around £70 million, adding an extra 800 rooms in Greater London. They will be at Waterloo, Ealing and Old Street in the City and are due to open in 2011.
Chief executive Alan Parker said: "There is an increasing need for high-quality, affordable accommodation in the capital."
