Whitbread is to focus much of its capital spending in the coming year on its Travel Inn chain, as it strives to reach its target of 25,000 rooms by 2008, the hotel and leisure group said last week as it unveiled its full-year results.
A sparkling performance from its budget chain, which with 293 hotels and 16,669 rooms is now the UK's largest hotel chain, did much to offset a weaker performance from Marriott, which suffered from last year's global economic slow-down and worldwide collapse in tourism.
Overall, pre-tax profits for the group in the year to 1 March were up by 14% to £214m, once the effect of new openings and disposals was stripped out.
Travel Inn achieved room rates of £39.98, up from £38.59, with occupancy up by one percentage point to 82% and like-for-like sales ahead by 6.1%.
Marriott, by comparison, turned in a static operating profit for the year, at £71.6m, and like-for-like sales were up by just 0.5%.
In the first eight weeks of the new financial year, Marriott's like-for-like sales fell by 4.1%, compared with growth of 4% at Travel Inn.
Occupancy levels at Marriott had been "maintained year-over-year", stressed Whitbread chief executive David Thomas, despite the "severe conditions" in the four-star market.
On the pub-restaurants side, Brewers Fayre saw like-for-like sales grow by 4% and its Brewsters brand rise by 5%. Sales at Beefeater were ahead by 0.8%, with 34 sites sold and a further 51 up for sale.