Whitbread acquires two hotels from Future Inns to support Premier Inn’s UK growth
- Well-positioned hotels in Bristol and Plymouth add 292-rooms to Premier Inn’s expanding network
- Hotels will be immediately converted into Premier Inn with rooms available to book from November
- Acquisition supports Whitbread’s Five-Year Plan ambitions to grow Premier Inn across the UK and Ireland
Whitbread PLC, the UK’s largest hotel company and owner of Premier Inn, has acquired two Future Inn hotels in Bristol and Plymouth as part of its continuing UK expansion drive.
The hotels, which match Premier Inn’s location requirements in the two cities, will add 292 bedrooms to the brand’s UK network – with more than half of the rooms set to open as Premier Inn bedrooms at the beginning of November (2026).
The FTSE100 hospitality business acquired the two purpose-built hotels in Plymouth and Bristol’s Cabot Circus freehold from Future Inns, a Canadian-based hotel company, for an undisclosed sum. The transaction is set to complete on 2nd October 2026.
Alex Flach, development director for Whitbread in the UK & Ireland, said:
“Acquiring the two trading hotels from Future Inns shows how flexible we can be to bring new locations into our secured pipeline. The hotels will strengthen our network in Plymouth and Bristol, two markets we see strong long-term demand and want to grow further, and as we are converting the buildings into Premier Inns rather than building the hotels from scratch, we can bring our new rooms on stream very quickly for our customers.”
Taking advantage of its in-house development and refurbishment expertise, Whitbread intends to have 155 of the hotel bedrooms ready to book as Premier Inn rooms on 2nd November.
The re-branded Premier Inn hotels will then continue to trade as the company refurbishes the remaining rooms with the transformation of the two locations scheduled to complete in mid-December (2026).
On completion, the hotels will offer the brand’s latest design Standard and enhanced ‘Premier Plus’ rooms, as well as its latest guest-focused restaurant offer.
Alex Flach continued:
“Being able to convert the hotels quickly into Premier Inns was very attractive to us when we were considering the acquisition. Both the Plymouth and Bristol hotels are the right size for us and being built in the mid-2000s, we can convert the purpose-built hotels relatively easily into latest format Premier Inns. In a market characterised by supply constraints and high development costs, we are increasingly looking at going concern sales to grow our market-leading brands, and we are keen to hear from other operators who are considering their portfolios.”
Once open, the two conversions will grow Premier Inn’s network to four hotels in Plymouth City Centre and five locations in Bristol City Centre.
The acquisition demonstrates the range of routes Whitbread is pursuing to deliver its growth aspirations as part of the company’s Five-Year Plan, combining new-build development, extensions, leasehold opportunities and strategic hotel acquisitions.
Under the plan, the company is set to offer its customers a choice of 98,000 Premier Inn bedrooms across the UK and Ireland by 2031, with the long-term potential for 125,000 hotel rooms in its core market in time.
Del Brett, Managing Director of Future Inns, UK, Limited, commented:
“Having developed and operated three Future Inns properties in the UK since 2005, it has been an important milestone for our company to sell our Plymouth and Bristol properties to Whitbread this year. Our company is transitioning at this time to the operation of our 197-bedroom original UK property in Cardiff Bay, which will continue to trade for the foreseeable future as Future Inn, offering the same high standards of accommodation, conferencing, and foodservice we have provided for many years.
“To our highly valued colleagues, guests, and suppliers in Bristol and Plymouth, we say a most sincere thank you for your support over the period we have operated in these cities. We trust that Whitbread will update and operate these hotels to their usual high standard in the coming years. We are very pleased to have completed this successful transaction in selling the properties to Whitbread and hope that they will continue as vibrant and attractive hotels well into the future.”
Knight Frank and Enterprise Hotels & Hospitality acted for Future Inns on the transaction. Whitbread’s in-house property acquisition team represented the FTSE100 hotelier.
Image credit: Future Inns (Bristol Cabot Circus hotel)
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