Whitbread and Punch unite over Travel Inns

The Whitbread Hotel Company has teamed up with rival Punch Group to form a joint venture that will build at least 50 Travel Inns next to Punch pubs over the next three years.

More than £80m will be invested in the venture, which will include converting five Wayfarer Lodges, with a total of 190 bedrooms, to Travel Inns.

The hotels will each have between 40 and 60 bedrooms. They will be managed by the Whitbread Hotel Co, 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 that the initiative would give his company access to Travel Inn's central reservations system, which would help increase occupancy. Wayfarer's occupancy is about 75%, while Travel Inn's is about 86%.

Carl Leaver, managing director of Travel Inn, said: "We've been opening a new Travel Inn every 10 days for the past five years and we've now got more than 250 Travel Inns and more than 13,000 rooms. This joint venture will allow us to continue with this speed of growth for at least the next four years."

Punch has more than 5,000 leased and managed pubs in the UK. Last year, it pipped Whitbread to the post in the race to buy 3,500 pubs from Allied Domecq.

Web link: www.whitbread.com

by David Shrimpton