The eight sites, which will create 340,000sq.ft of hotel and restaurant space, are located across the UK including in Eastbourne and Redditch. They will have a capitalised lease value of more than £50m.
The largest will be a 183-bed office conversion in the City of London near Monument station.
The UK’s largest budget hotel brand currently boasts over 600 hotels in the country and Ireland and has previously said it is looking at more than 300 target towns for further expansion.
Same again
John Bates, head of acquisitions for Premier Inn UK & Ireland, said the ambitious completion of deals on eight new hotels in a week was not the end of expansion plans for the brand.
“Premier Inn is one of the most active developers in the market today. In this latest financial year, we have added 40 new sites to our secured pipeline which is equivalent to 1.6m sq.ft of new commercial space. That’s an impressive achievement in anyone’s book and we intend to do the same again, every year, for the next three years,” he said.
“We’re achieving successful growth because of the strong customer demand for Premier Inn around the UK and, importantly, because we’re set up to deliver. We have many years of experience, offer the solidity of Whitbread financial backing, are fully flexible on the types of schemes we can make work and offer investment grade leases,” Bates added
Olympics expansion
The chain has set itself a target of operating 65,000 rooms by 2016 and in September announced plans for a major expansion drive in London ahead of the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Three of the new hotels contained in the latest expansion announcement are located within the M25, including Bromley and Sutton, taking it closer to the target which Premier Inn says will make it the largest provider of budget hotels in London.
Last month Whitbread announced it was also launching three skills academies across the UK to offer training for restaurant and kitchen managers in time for the Games and the Diamond Jubilee celebrations later this year.
The Dunstable-based company which also operates the Beefeater and Cost Coffee brands announced as part of a trading update this year that it will create 10,000 new jobs over the next three years – around 400 of these will come from the eight new Premier Inn sites announced today.
The eight new Premier Inn hotelsare a mixture of office-to-hotel conversions, developer turnkey and new build schemes and developer-led schemes subject to planning permission:
- Beverley – 79-bed hotel as part of the Flemingate regeneration scheme
- Bromley – 130-bed hotel as part of the Bromley South Central regeneration scheme
- Catterick – 60-bed hotel and Brewers Fayre at Catterick Garrison
- City of London – 183-bed office-to-hotel conversion in EC3 near Monument station
- Eastbourne – a 65-bed office-to-hotel conversion at Terminus Road
- Longbridge – a 75-bed hotel and Beefeater Grill as part of the town centre regeneration scheme
- Redditch – a 62-bed hotel and Beefeater Grill next t to the Abbey Retail Park
- Sutton – a 120-bed hotel at the Sutton Superbowl site