Whitbread eyes staycation bounce after posting $1.4 billion annual loss By Reuters

(Reuters) -Premier-Inn owner Whitbread (LON:WTB) posted a 1 billion pound ($1.39 billion) annual loss on Tuesday but said it expects a significant bounce in staycation demand this summer as COVID-19 curbs in Britain are relaxed.

Whitbread, which also owns the Beefeater, Brewers Fayre and Bar + Block chains, said revenue for the year ended March 31 slumped by nearly three quarters, sending its shares down 3% in morning trading.

Britain’s hospitality industry has suffered during the pandemic, with travel and entertainment spending severely restricted by government measures to stop the spread of the virus.

Britain’s latest lockdown is still being eased, with hotels and cinemas not set to open until May 17 at the earliest, according to a four-stage plan https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-factbox-idUSKBN2AM207 set out in February.

The UK’s COVID-19 vaccination programme, under which more than half of Britons so far have been given at least one shot, would support the return of leisure guests to Whitbread’s hotels in tourist locations, Chief Executive Alison Brittain said.

“We will definitely be hiring in the summer for seasonal work for coastal destinations that are going to be full,” she said on a call with journalists. Coastal and other tourist locations make up about 15% of Whitbread’s hotels.

Brittain also said the company expects to add about 4,000 to 5,000 new rooms in the UK and Germany over the next year to take advantage of post-pandemic opportunities in markets where smaller players may not have the resources to grow.

The company, which has the bulk of its business in the UK, said that more than 92% of its hotels in the country are now open after occupancy levels across all its hotels declined to 23% in January and 29% in February.

Whitbread reported a statutory pretax loss of 1.01 billion pounds ($1.40 billion) for 2020, compared with a profit of 280 million pounds a year earlier. The adjusted loss was 635.1 million pounds, compared with a company-compiled consensus of 688 million pounds.

Sales fell 71.5% to 589.4 million pounds, compared with an average analyst estimate of 616 million pounds.

($1 = 0.7201 pounds)