Alan Parker, managing director of Whitbread hotels, seems an ordinary sort of man. There's nothing particularly flamboyant about him, nothing dramatic. He wears navy blue; he appears reserved and slightly balding. He's amiable, maybe even jolly, but it's well hidden beneath a façade of caution.
There's nothing unusual about his office in Whitbread's Luton headquarters either. It's large - not ostentatiously so - but there's no expensive or particularly outstanding furniture. The most notable item in the room is a large map of the UK with meticulously placed, colour-coded pins marking every Whitbread hotel. It's a revealing insight into the mind of the man leading what is now the UK's largest hotel company.
Parker is, of course, not so average when it comes to Whitbread. And his apparent joviality is tempered by an unshakeable drive for achievement and reports of an, at times, abrasive management style and sizeable ego.
While some say Parker is proud, most agree that he has some reason to be. When he joined Whitbread in 1992, in the depths of recession, the hotels division was referred to internally as the "Siberia" of Whitbread, accounting for only £2m of the company's turnover. The task that faced him then was enormous: to turn around a hotel business that lacked a clear vision for the future, in which the hotels were not financially sound and were not run well operationally.
Eleven years later, Whitbread Hotel Company (WHC) is the largest hotel group in the country and makes up more than 50% of Whitbread's turnover (£139m), and Parker, aged 56, is rumoured to be a strong candidate for becoming chief executive when David Thomas steps down next year.
It has also become a pretty good place to work. WHC was recently placed 50th in the Sunday Times list of the country's best companies to work for (the only hotel company to be listed), while the Financial Times survey put it at number 15. Despite the international downturn in the hotel industry's fortunes, Whitbread's end-of-year results, announced at the end of last month, reveal that WHC is continuing in the path of growth Parker has methodically striven for.
Travel Inn, in particular, shines out. Like-for-like sales for the year ending 1 March are up 6.1%. Average achieved room rate also grew from £38.59 to £39.98, while occupancy rose one percentage point to an impressive 82%.
The path of hospitality
Parker's success with Travel Inn is no coincidence. Apart from a couple of years in the Parachute Regiment's Territorial Army battalion after graduating in hotel management at the University of Surrey, he is proud to admit he has never since swerved from the path of hospitality. He started work in his parents' family restaurant, progressing to more prominent roles including managing director, Europe, of Crest Hotels and, more critically, six years as senior vice-president of Holiday Inn Europe, Middle East and Africa, based in Brussels.
"Holiday Inn was an exceptionally good learning experience for me," says Parker. "When the company was founded and developed in the 1960s and 1970s, it really wrote the book of modern hotel branding. They set out the stall which everyone then copied. Working there has been vital to my success with Travel Inn."
And that success, he says, is down to discipline. "We have kept it very simple and focused on what the customer wants. We haven't taken it upmarket or introduced price escalation. My role has been to keep the formula strictly to the brand values and, at the same time, introduce proven management techniques and processes we've learnt from other parts of the hotel business."
Parker is also keen to point out that the new 590-bedroom Travel Inn at London's Heathrow will be both the brand's 300th opening and Britain's largest budget hotel. "It's a landmark for us this year," he says. "But we still have a continuous and ambitious programme of expanding the brand."
This is nothing new. Since Parker's arrival, Travel Inn has been expanding by 1,500 rooms a year, and he aims to add another 8,000 by 2005 - making a total of 25,000. Occupancy remains about 10% higher than that of the chain's main competitors.
Brand strategy
And, although size is not the only measure of success, Parker is certain that in Travel Inn's case, bigger is better. "To grow Travel Inn so it has dominance in the budget sector and is the UK's largest individual hotel chain is a marketing objective in its own right," he says. "To have a Travel Inn wherever you want to go in the UK is part of our brand strategy."
Compared with WHC's success in the budget sector, however, development of the Marriott brand has been more sluggish, and it's here that some industry commentators point to a weak spot in the giant's armour. Suffering from the same malaise as the rest of the sector, particularly in London, Marriott's end-of-year results saw a drop in sales of 3.1% to £392m, while achieved room rates dropped from £74 to £72.
Whitbread's long-term partnership with Marriott has proved a sound basis on which to build a hard and reliable brand for the company, however. And Parker's steady approach to development, through the acquisition of Swallow in 2000 and strict ongoing refurbishment schedules, has resulted in measured, if not dramatic, progress.
Parker remains reserved on the matter of future development, however. He cites the "macro geopolitical issues which have meant a slump in the international hotel market" as the cause of the current "pause" in the expansion of Marriott. The same goes for WHC's midmarket and boutique brands, Courtyard by Marriott and Renaissance. The last two brands, relatively embryonic at present, are opportunities which some industry observers say WHC would be wise to develop quickly before someone else gets there first.
Parker, as one commentator noted, is "battle-hardened" by experience, however, and it seems unlikely that his plans for WHC's future are as indefinite as he implies. While confirming he has no current plans for taking Travel Inn to the Continent, he doesn't rule it out in the future. It's the same story with potential sale-and-leaseback deals on Marriott properties. "Some analysts aren't so sold on sale and leaseback," he says. "But there are some clear and strong arguments both in favour and against."
He's a cautious man, a "steady Eddie" as another analyst described him, but Parker is undoubtedly a man with a cause. "These are probably the worst trading conditions that I've seen over the last 30 years in the business," he says. "It's a question of survival of the fittest. We have two of the best brands within the industry, and we compare to any other company and not just hotel companies. That's what we wanted to create."
And Parker is clear what he'd like to be remembered for: "Creating Britain's leading hotel company - for the long term." And what he'd most like forgotten? "Buying a quarter of a racehorse," he says reluctantly.
No doubt Parker would also like to be remembered for his recent appointment to the board of VisitBritain, the new national tourism organisation. He's also a director of the Lyric Theatre in London's Hammersmith.
"The most important thing I've learnt during my career is that's it's all about people. It took me 20 years to realise this - and mean it. A lot of people talk about it and there are a lot of clichés about, but now I know you've got to really, really mean it. It's the only way."
Whitbread Hotel Company: a potted history
Whitbread was founded in 1742. Originally known for brewing beer, the Whitbread of today is a major leisure company incorporating restaurants, leisure clubs and hotels. The company has annual sales of about £2b and employs more than 80,000 people. Whitbread abandoned its alcoholic origins in 2000 when it sold its brewing arm to Belgian company Interbrew for £400m.
The hotel side of Whitbread was initially known primarily for the Coaching Inns brand, but this grew over time and the estate eventually centred on Country Club hotels, Lansbury hotels and Travel Inn. The three brands were integrated in March 1991 and became know as the Country Club Hotel Group. Five years later - and following the acquisition of the right to franchise Marriott in the UK in 1996 - the Country Club Hotel Group announced it would from then on be known as the Whitbread Hotel Company (WHC).
In January 2000 WHC bought the Swallow Group for £650m and will have converted all 26 Swallow hotels to the Marriott brand by this July. To date, more than £50m has been invested in the conversions and the remaining 12 are up for sale. By August, there will be 60 Marriotts in the UK run by Whitbread.
WHC also owns Courtyard by Marriott - a three-star brand - and two Renaissance-branded properties. There are now 300 Travel Inns operating in the UK.