As in France, budget hotels in the UK performed well over the past year, as shown by the results just presented by the Whitbread Group, parent company of Premier Inn hotels, for the 2022-2023 financial year. With growth in revenue per room of +27 % compared with 2020, its establishments have been able to take particular pleasure from the good performance of domestic business travel. " Demand from British companies was strong throughout the year, while volumes generated by office workers and sales reps remained solid." . Hence the return to a balanced customer mix, 50% leisure - 50% business.
To bolster a business segment that has been faltering in recent years, Whitbread has set about successfully strengthening its relationships with TMCs while improving its Business Booker and Business Account portals, whose number of accounts is up by +1321TP3Q vs 2020. A strategy geared towards a clientele that contributes more to hotel revenues, which the British hotelier intends to focus on even more in the future: " After developing our Business Booker and Business Account programmes over the last few years, we plan to further increase our revenues by improving our website and integrating the two programmes into a single offering" .
In addition to these figures, the announcement gave Whitbread's management the opportunity to review the development of Premier Inn, the leader in its market. With 83,500 rooms and almost 800 hotels, the brand now represents 12 % of the UK hotel offer. And probably more in the future. At a time when the independent hotel sector has been hard hit by the pandemic, Premier Inn intends to take advantage of the situation to push its offer even further, and has set itself a long-term target of 125,000 rooms, compared with 110,000 previously.
Already, with all the projects underway, Premier Inn's offering should soon pass the 90,000-room mark. All these establishments will reproduce the flagship model of hotel-pubs, with catering forming an integral part of the offer, Whitbread also owning the Brewers Fayre and Beefeater brands. At the same time, the group has allowed itself a few steps to the side with the launch in 2019 of the ZIP by Premier Inn concept in Cardiff, with very small rooms designed by PriestmanGoode, the specialist in Première aircraft cabins. A trial run that is unlikely to go any further, according to Dominic Paul, CEO of Whitbread, during the Q&A after the announcement of his group's results: "We have no major expansion plans for zip. The hotel is doing well, but we don't expect it to grow significantly in the short term." .
As another variation on the main model, in the mid-2010s the British group launched a series of urban, high-tech, limited-service capsule hotels, the hub by Premier Inn. Quite similar to YotelSince the opening of the Covent Garden hub in November 2014, this concept has been going from strength to strength, and now boasts around 15 establishments in Edinburgh and London. These include the hub by Premier Inn Clerkenwell, which opened last month in the British capital.
As well as new establishments in St Helier and Milton Keynes, Premier Inn's offer has been strengthened especially in London last year with the opening of its tallest hotel in the UK, a 400-room property in Canary Wharf. At the same time, the hotel operator has strengthened its offer around Marylebone and Paddington station with three new hotels, including one opened last year.
Premier Inn heads for Ireland and Germany
Still in the British Isles, Premier Inn is also beginning to roll out its offer in Ireland. After opening its first hotel in Dublin in 2021, the hotelier has just added a second in March, on Gloucester Street. Premier Inn also has a presence near Swords airport in the Irish capital, and its expansion will continue with two hotels under construction in Dublin, one in the Liberties district and the other near the docks. At the same time, Premier Inn will be setting up in Cork city centre by the end of 2023 and is aiming to establish itself in other Irish cities such as Galway, Kildare, Killarney and Limerick.
However, Premier Inn's international offering also includes a number of establishments in the Middle East - in Abu Dhabi, Doha and Dubai, Germany is the main target of the British group. " Our ambition is to become the market leader" explains Whitbread, whose offer should gradually move closer to the main local player, Motel One, and the two French brands with a strong presence in Germany, B&B and Ibis, the current leader with 24,000 rooms.
Although Premier Inn currently has just 9,000 rooms in 51 hotels, 37 projects are underway, with plans for the brand's arrival in a large number of secondary cities such as Aachen, Dortmund, Kassel and Osnabrück, in addition to its current presence in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and Munich in particular. As in the UK, Premier Inn is targeting business customers to drive business in all these establishments. " With a large number of international trade fairs and a major market for short business trips, we have set up a network of local sales managers to help establish and secure relationships with companies." said the English group.
