Q&A with Alan Parker

Transcript

Well Whitbread brands are absolutely at the leading edge of what's important in life today in Britain. What we have is the largest hotel company in the country in Premier Inn, which is not just the leading budget hotel operator, but it's also the largest hotel brand in the UK. We have our Pub Restaurant brands which are Beefeater, and Table Table, Brewers Fayre and the latest brand of Taybarns which are leading the way in casual dining, with some 380 restaurants across Britain and we also have Costa, put it all together, 333,000 people serving in hotels and restaurants across Britain.

1. What are the key highlights of 2008/9?

   The key highlights of the last financial year are many, but overall it's been a good year for Whitbread. Clearly it's been in circumstances of the economy which has been deteriorating during that time, but in the first half, particularly in the summer of 2008 the results were great. After Christmas and January, and February, things definitely slowed down, but taking the 12 months as a whole, I think Whitbread has had a good year.

   Other highlights have been an increase in sales by just over 9%, and increase in profits by over 9% to just under £230m, a record year for expansion, we opened a new hotel on average every week of the year last year, we opened our first international hotels in Dublin and Dubai, we opened a new coffee shop on average everyday of the year last year and we substantially improved the performance of our branded restaurant operation. So these are, I think, very credible results.

2. How has Premier Inn performed?

   What sets us apart from the competition is the consistency that we have in all of our hotels, nearly 600 hotels right across the country all built to the same standards, they may look slightly different from the outside, but we have some larger hotels and we have some smaller hotels but the bedroom standard is all absolutely consistent and we believe is equal to 3 and 4 star hotels at half the price.

3. How have the Pub Restaurants performed?

   Our restaurant business is doing well, we've invested in it, we've done a lot of refurbishment over 40 new restaurants have been refurbished during the course of the year, we've spent money on developing our menu propositions so we've improved the quality of our menus, we've developed value for money prices which people find particularly attractive, we're selling steak and chips at our Beefeater restaurant s for lower that we were 10 years ago, not many people can do that I don't think.

4. How has Costa performed?

   Well Costa has been resilient despite the economic conditions, and we have increased the number of Costa stores, but they've also maintained our like for like sales in the stores that have been opened for more than a year.

5. How are you investing in your people?

   Our people are by far and away the most important thing we have at Whitbread, we have a great team of people, but we can always know we can even to better than we do at the moment, so we're investing in a new Whitbread apprenticeship scheme, which is going to create 3000 new apprentices this year, both new starters, we're going to create overall 1000 new jobs, but also another at least 2000 people from within the existing workforce and they will be developing skills to do their jobs better, whether it is in the restaurants, in the hotels, in the kitchens, in the coffee shops or wherever within Whitbread, but also new jobs in new hotels, new restaurants and new coffee shops as well.

6. What growth will take place in 2009/10?

   Well we're still expanding. Last year was a record year, but looking at the economic conditions that we're faced with today we have to be disciplined about how much capital expenditure we make but we will still be expanding, and expanding at a rate. For example we will be developing and opening over 2000 Premier Inn bedrooms both here in the UK and internationally, we'll be opening some 200 Costa Coffee stores again in the UK and international, and we'll be having a number of new pub restaurants on our joint sites with Premier Inns as well.

7. In tough times what are your priorities?

   Well we've got 3 priorities for next year. Number one is we're going to achieve a cash flow neutrality, that means that we're not going to spend any money that we don't earn during the course of the year, so our borrowings at the end of the year will be the same as our borrowings at the beginning of the year.

   Number 2 is that we will be focusing on developing our leading brand positions, and that means both through expansion, and by taking customers from other people, so we'll be gearing up a particular aggressive marketing campaign on 3 and 4 star hotels to demonstrate how people can save money by staying in Premier Inns.

   And number 3 is of course we're maintain our cost efficiency programme, we announced last year a saving of £25m, that we would be achieving over the next 3 years, which we're half way through at the moment. We saved £7m this year, we'll be saving another 10m this year, and the balance the year after, so we are well on track with a very carefully thought through programmes to be able to achieve that.

   What Whitbread is doing to gear up for this year ahead is focusing on customers, keeping very much in touch with what customers are thinking, focusing on delivering value for money, focusing on our people, keeping our training and our recruitment absolutely up to scratch to deliver consistent high quality value for money right across the country.