11 May 2017, London: Budget hotels now account for nearly two-thirds of the UK’s top 10 brands as global hotel companies continue to diversify from their traditionally more upmarket offerings to the ever-popular budget sector.
According to Hotel Bulletin Q1 2017, published this week by HVS, AlixPartners, STR and AM:PM, Premier Inn and Travelodge between them account for 52% of all branded rooms in the UK’s top 10 and are also the most active in terms of future growth.
The Bulletin compares the list of the UK’s top 10 hotel brands in terms of room numbers with the top 10 in terms of new rooms pipeline. It finds that Premier Inn, the largest in terms of room numbers with 67,515, and Travelodge, number two with 39,531, also represent almost half of the UK’s active hotel pipeline with 5,086 and 2,660 rooms planned respectively.
In third place in terms of supply is Holiday Inn, with 20,707 rooms but a pipeline of only 430, while fifth-placed Hilton (14,793) has only 200 rooms in its development pipeline.
Overall, it is the emerging brands that have amongst the most aggressive opening plans such as Hampton by Hilton (active pipeline of 1,881 rooms), Hub by Premier Inn (1,396) and Holiday Inn Express (1,244).
“Only six brands have an active pipeline of more than 1,000 rooms and all are at the budget end of the market as the smaller budget brands continue their relentless drive for greater distribution whilst the two giants slug it out to maintain their growth trajectories, ” commented HVS chairman Russell Kett.
“Whilst attention is clearly focused on developing other IHG and Hilton brands, and growth by rebranding existing hotels is not included in this analysis, it begs the question as to whether the ‘core brands’ are in danger of stagnating if nothing is done to address this,” he added.
“However, as many rooms as are being actively developed remaining currently on the drawing board, there is potentially healthy future growth in supply as time progresses and planned projects become firmer,” he concluded.
Download the Hotel Bulletin: Q1 2017 containing the full top 10 lists.
