Room growth at Whitbread offsets drop in restaurant revenue

Whitbread has reported a 2% a drop in revenue to £1.57b for the first half of 2025 due to a flat accommodation market and an 11% drop in food and beverage sales.

Adjusted profit after tax was also slightly down at £217m for the 26 weeks to 28 August 2025.

Whitbread said that Premier Inn UK sales were in line with 2024, though it had experienced a soft first quarter. Revenue per available room (revpar) was down 1%, while occupancy remained at 81% and average room rate increased to £85.95.

The business said that in London that leisure demand and a positive events calendar led to an increase in both average room rate and accommodation sales, up 0.6% and 1.2% respectively. It added that for the Oasis concerts at Wembley its revenue management systems enabled it to outperform the market on both occupancy and revpar.

Though average room rate was 2.3% higher than last year outside the capital, occupancy was slightly lower at 81.1%, resulting in a 1% reduction in total accommodation sales.

Total UK food and beverage sales fell by 11%, which Whitbread said reflected its work to re-position some and sell others. It has replaced 200 “lower-returning branded restaurants” with what is described as an integrated food and beverage offering.

There are 826 Premier Inn hotels operating in the UK, with a total of 85,682 rooms. This represents a 12% share of UK hotel rooms.

Whitbread said it has grown its pipeline of new rooms by 25% to 7,800, of which 2,205 are ‘hub by Premier Inn’, underlying its confidence in the brand’s growth potential.

Chief executive Dominic Paul said: “In the UK, with a return to market growth, we sustained our outperformance versus the market through the strength of our guest proposition and commercial programme.

“We are making strong progress on our Accelerating Growth Plan which, together with our committed pipeline of both Premier Inn and ‘hub by Premier Inn’ rooms, means we remain on track to reach at least 98,000 open rooms by FY30, extending our position as the clear market leader.”

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