Overall ranking: 19 (5)

Hoteliers ranking: 5 (2)

Alan Parker - Snapshot
Alan Parker is chief executive of Whitbread, which has grown from its 1742 brewing origins into one of the UK’s largest hospitality firms. In the year to March 2006, it made pre-tax profits of £181m on a £1.58b turnover.

Alan Parker - Career guide
Parker was born near Whitbread’s historic Chiswell Street site in London in 1946. After working in his family’s London restaurant, Parker moved into hotels as sales and marketing director at Thistle Hotels between 1974 and 1982 and at Crest Hotels between 1982 and 1985.

From 1985 to 1987, he was managing director for Europe at Crest Hotels and, in 1987, he become Holiday Inn’s senior vice-president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. 

He joined Whitbread in 1992 as managing director of its hotel division. He became a board member in 2000 and chief executive in June 2004.

Alan Parker - What we think
When Parker joined Whitbread, its hotel arm (then called Country Club Hotel Group) was a small, financially-unsound division contributing just £2m to group profits. It is now the UK’s largest hotel operator.

Parker added 1,500 bedrooms a year to the budget Travel Inn brand along with the 141 Premier Lodges he bought in July 2004; arranged the UK master franchise deal with Marriott in 1995; and bought 26 Swallow hotels in 2000 most of which were reflagged as Marriotts.

As chief executive, he has continued to reshape a group that had already shed its brewing interests in 2000, its pubs and bars division in 2001, and its Pelican and BrightSeasons restaurant divisions in 2002.

However, there have been some changes in tack over this period, such as the major expansion drive for Brewers Fayre and Pizza Hut announced in November 2004. This may explain Whitbread’s fall from 54th to 102nd position in the 2005 peer-reviewed listings of Britain’s most admired 220 companies. 

Parker’s strategy of refocusing on the budget and four-star hotel markets was signalled by the November 2004 sale of 11 three-star Courtyard by Marriotts and plans to negotiate sale-and-manageback deals on 25 four-star Marriotts.

But in March 2005 Parker washed his hands of the four-star Marriotts as high franchise fees frustrated efforts to lift their performance. He put the franchised hotels into a joint operating company with Marriott, relinquished the UK master franchise, and sold the properties to the Royal Bank of Scotland in April 2006 – an exercise that raised nearly £1b in total and brought a £400m windfall for shareholders.

The merger of the pub-restaurant division with Premier Travel Inn in October 2005 suggested they could be next for the chop. This July – three months after the pub-restaurants posted a 23% drop in full-year operating profits – Parker sold 239 Brewers Fayres and Beefeaters to Mitchells & Butlers for £497m, retaining 350 sites adjacent to Premier Travel Inns.

A month later, Parker sold Whitbread’s 50% stake in the 687-strong Pizza Hut UK chain for £112m to Yum! Restaurants, its US owner and UK franchise partner since 1982.

The focus now is on the star-performing Premier Travel Inn and Costa Coffee, which boosted operating profits by 38% (to £139m) and 26% (to £13.3m) respectively.

Parker intends to add 1,500 new bedrooms each year to the Premier Travel Inn estate to boost bedroom numbers to 40,000 by 2010 and take the brand to Dubai next year to make its overseas debut in partnership with the Emirates Group. He expects the rapidly-growing Costa Coffee brand to grow to 1,000 outlets here and overseas in the same period.
 
Parker is also chairman of the British Hospitality Association; a member of the World Travel and Tourism Council, VisitBritain; a patron of the Hospitality Action benevolent fund; and a visiting professor at the University of Surrey. He was voted the Business Leader of the Year by his peers in the 2003 Hotel Reports Awards.

Alan Parker – Further information

Whitbread offical website

Whitbread profile on CatererSearch

Whitbread profile on Wikipedia

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