Whitbread, owner of the Premier Inn and Hub by Premier Inn brands, has secured two further UK sites to expand its portfolio.
In London, it has acquired Dorset House, a former office building in south London. The block will undergo conversion to create a 400 room Hub by Premier Inn, taking its compact city hotel format south of the River Thames for the first time. The group will shortly submit plans to gain approval for conversion of the six storey block.
Building in city centres
And in Carlisle, Whitbread has acquired a city centre site where it plans to build a Premier Inn hotel, for opening by late 2028. The site was acquired from Cumberland Council, which took on ownership following the death of the previous owner. The Central Plaza inn previously stood on the site, but the building was demolished in 2020 as it was structurally unsound.
And in St Ives, Cornwall, Whitbread has won consent for a 90 bedroom hotel on appeal. A strong local campaign opposed the new build hotel, a redevelopment of a care home site, and the local authority refused the proposal. But a government planning inspector has overruled local wishes, declaring the redevelopment would not be unduly harmful to the local area.
Whitbread undertakes office conversions where practical, viewing it as a more sustainable way to develop new hotels. In the second half of 2024, it acquired Verity House, a modern office building in Leeds, for conversion to a 120 room hotel, adding to its inventory in the city. And an agreement with landlord Abrdn saw the opening of a 125 room hotel in central Cambridge, created from the conversion of vacant office space above a shopping centre.
The group continues to drive growth in its key markets of the UK, Germany and Ireland. And alongside city centre hotels, it is also building at airports, with live projects under preparation at Edinburgh airport, and at Belfast airport in Northern Ireland.
In Germany, the group is also expanding fast, and working with strategic construction partners to help accelerate that growth. Those partners include Lechner Group, which specialises in modular construction, something that can not only speed up build times, but gives greater cost certainty. Lechner is already delivering a new Premier Inn in Eschborn, where up to 90% of the structure will be fabricated off-site. And it has started on a second site, at Gateway Gardens close to Frankfurt airport where a 202 room Premier Inn is under way.
Finding ways to build smarter
Another partner is LIST Develop, which is on site building the 115 room Premier Inn Bremerhaven, which will be completed within 18 months. It has also started constructing a second hotel, in Magdeburg. And a third preferred partner, Peter Gross Bau, is already working on a 195 room Premier Inn in Mannheim.
“The strategy of relying on preferred partners supports us significantly in the acquisition process because we can quickly and reliably calculate potential projects,” said Chris-Norman Sauer, acquisitions director at Premier Inn. “This allows us to start operations sooner.”
