Travel Inn and Punch in joint venture
The Whitbread Hotel Company has teamed up with rival Punch Group to form a joint venture that will build at least 50 new Travel Inns next to Punch pubs over the next three years.
More than £80m will be invested in the joint venture, which includes five existing Wayfarer Lodges that will be converted to Travel Inns.
The new hotels will each have between 40 and 60 bedrooms. They will be managed by the Whitbread Hotel Company, but the board of the joint venture will be made up of three directors from Punch and three from Whitbread Hotels.
Marc Jonas, group property director of Punch, said the initiative would give his company access to Travel Inn's central reservations system, which would help increase occupancy.
Carl Leaver, managing director of Travel Inn, said: "Following hot on the heels of our recent deal with RoadChef, we're delighted to reach this agreement with Punch, which gives us access to even more great sites."
It would allow Travel Inn to reach areas of the country where, until now, it had not had a presence, he said.
Leaver added: "We've been opening a new Travel Inn every 10 days for the last five years and we've now got over 250 Travel Inns and more than 13,000 rooms. This joint venture will allow us to continue this speed of growth for at least the next four years."
Punch Group is one of the largest pub chains in the UK with more than 5,000 leased and managed properties. Last year it pipped Whitbread to the post in the race to buy 3,500 pubs from Allied Domecq.
by David Shrimpton david.shrimpton@rbi.co.uk
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