Whitbread announces bid to create 10,000 jobs
Hotel and restaurant group Whitbread – which is building a huge new Premier Inn in the heart of Shrewsbury – today announced plans to create 10,000 new jobs.
The jobs will be created over the next three years and the group, which also owns Costa Coffee, says booming sales are fuelling its expansion plans.
The chain took on an extra 1,500 staff in the first half of the year as sales soared by 14.2 per cent to £1.01 billion and pre-tax profit went up 10.6 per cent to £193.4m. Now it says it wants to create up to 10,000 new posts over the next three years as it continues to expand.
Chief executive Andy Harrison said the London hotel market was settling following the Olympics and that Premier Inn’s strong brand was attracting increasing numbers of customers.
He described the performance of Costa – which has a cafe on Shrewsbury High Street – as ‘outstanding’.
Premier Inn opened 1,591 new UK rooms taking its total to 49,020. The company aims to have 65,000 rooms by 2016.
It is building an £8 million hotel in Smithfield Road which will create 40 new jobs and is set to open within the next six months. It will have 136 rooms.