Bumper festive season for the Coaching Inn Group

A strong performance during the festive season rounded off a bumper year for the market town hotel, restaurant and coffee shop operator the Coaching Inn Group.

The company, which owns and operates 16 inns across England and Wales, reported like-for-like sales rise by 4.5% during the five weeks to 31 December 2019, with net sales of £3.2m up 7.1% on the same period in 2018.

The acquisition in December of the 22-bedroom Bell Inn hotel in Stilton, Cambridgeshire (pictured), helped boost the figures, which saw average weekly sales rise to £49,000 per site during the final two weeks of the year.

In the company's financial results just posted to Companies House for the year to 31 March 2019, the Coaching Inn Group confirmed a 24.2% increase in turnover to £24.9m, with earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, amoritisation and exceptional items (EBITDA) up 56.1% to £3.25m. Pre-tax loss increased from £600,108 to £1.5m.

Occupancy across the group increased by 3.4% to 79.8%, with average room rate and revenue per available room (revpar) up by 5.9% to £60.55 and 9.8% to £48.29 respectively.

Kevin Charity, chief executive of the Coaching Inn Group, said: "Against a tough backdrop of some excellent sales figures last year, we were particularly pleased with the strong trading we delivered in December.

"Each of our sites continued to show how central they are to the communities in which they operate, as well as the robustness of our business model with bedrooms again aiding the increase in sales with like for like room revenue up 10.3% in final two weeks as our festive packages continue to prove popular."

The Coaching Inn Group completed a £22m refinance package with equity partner BGF last month, which will help expand the company through further acquisitions.