Commercial Property News

Whitbread, Britain's biggest hotel and restaurants operator, said today like-for-like sales across the group increased by 7% in the 24 weeks to Aug 14.

The group said its Premier Inn budget hotel chain, which accounts for about 70% of profits, had outperformed the wider hotel market, with total sales up 17.9% and like-for-like sales up 10.2%. Growth here has come from a strong corporate response to the corporate card programme. The split on numbers is 50/50 business to leisure, but the revenue from business customers is better making the revenue split 60/40.

This  has been driven by 7.6% more rooms sold in an expanded estate (up 14 hotels and 1,157 rooms) and REVPAR increasing 5.8%.  The business is well on target to open 4000 rooms this  year with the M&B estate acquisition due to complete in September, as the business heads for it's 55,000 room target.

Whitbread pub restaurants have improved performance with total sales up 6.0% and like for like sales up 4.4% from a customer volume up 9.3%.  

Costa continues to demonstrate good growth with total sales growing 23.6%. Following a strong second quarter last year, like for like sales increased 3.7%. The estate expanded to 1,100 stores, 769 in the UK and 331 overseas.  Since March 108 units have been added overall, 74 in the UK and 34 overseas, including  first 2 stores in Beijing prior to the Olympics.

The company still regards commercial property prices in the UK as too high for it to contemplate open market purchases on a large scale.