Whitbread
Whitbread PLC is the UK’s largest hotel and restaurant group operating market-leading businesses in the budget hotels and restaurant sectors. Its well-loved brands are Premier Inn, Beefeater, Table Table, Brewers Fayre, Taybarns and Costa Coffee. Its success is due to the 30,000 people it employs and the skill with which they serve the 9 million customers, who each month visit one of their 1800 outlets across the UK. Whitbread’s strategy is to create value for their shareholders by focusing on growth in expanding sectors of the hospitality industry, primarily in the UK, but also in selected international markets.
Apart from the Premier Inn JV in India, Whitbread has a Premier Inn JV in The Gulf with Emirates Group; two JV’s for Costa Coffee in China and acts as a franchisor to numerous franchisees for Costa Coffee in India, the Middle East and North Africa and Eastern & Central Europe and Russia. In the financial year to February 2009, Whitbread generated pre-tax, pre-exceptional profit of £229.9 m (+9.3%) generated out of sales of £1.34 bn (+9.7%). Founded in 1742, the company is listed on the London Stock Exchange (as WTBL)
and is a member of the FTSE4Good Index.
