Whitbread Comforted by Premier Inn’s Performance

Whitbread says that it has ‘performed well in recession and is strongly paced for any recovery’, after announcing like-for-like sales up 7.6% and total sales up 13.5% for the 13 weeks to 3rd June.

Premier Inn was the hotel and leisure group’s star performer, with an increase of 10.5% in like-for-like sales. This was driven by ‘increased marketing’ and ‘dynamic pricing’. The company says that Premier Inn had increased both business revenue and attracted more weekend guests with its special offers and Good Night Guarantee.

Costa Coffee achieved a grande-sized 26.9% improvement in total sales, with like-for-likes of 8.5%. The company was cheered by the Advertising Standards Authority decision not to uphold competitor complaints about the “7 out of 10 Coffee Lovers Prefer Costa” campaign. Costa is expanding worldwide and it is in the process of integrating 89 Coffeeheaven stores, which it has acquired in Central Europe.

Whitbread’s pub restaurants – which include Beefeater, Brewers Fayre and Taybarns – lagged a little behinds the rest of the company, with like-for-likes sales improvement of 3.6%. They did though attract 5.2% more customers.

Overall, Whitbread says that it is pursuing a value for money strategy in the context of a consumer climate which is not getting any easier - even without the austerity measures of this week’s budget. It is, though, keen to increase market share via improved occupancy in its hotels and customer volumes at Costa and its restaurants. Whitbread says that it now has a robust balance sheet which is underpinned by “a strong freehold asset base” Last year it took measures to reduce costs and conserve cash.

24 June 2010