Whitbread profits up on back of Costa Coffee sales boost
Whitbread Group, owner of the Premier Inn and Costa Coffee brands, has seen like for like sales rise 1.8 per cent on the back of a 2.6 per cent rise in sales at the coffee chain over the 13 weeks to 2 June.
The news offsets a ‘weaker than expected’ hotel market, driven down by poor performance in London which nevertheless saw Premier Inn gain market share on the back of a 2.1 per cent increase in like-for-like sales.
This saw the important revenue per room benchmark fall by 0.5 per cent on a like-for-like basis as Whitbread managed the ‘dilution’ effect of having added 3,600 rooms in the final quarter of 2015.
Whitbread chief executive Alison Brittain said: "Although it is early in our new financial year and despite current market conditions, with the benefit of our cost efficiency programme we remain confident of making good progress for the full year."
To accommodate a rise in demand Whitbread has set itself an ambitious target of opening up to 250 new Costa Coffee stores worldwide on top of 4,500 Premier Inn hotel rooms by 2017.