Whitbread accelerates Hub by Premier Inn expansion

Whitbread is to expand its Hub by Premier Inn brand following its freehold acquisition of Victory House in London’s Holborn.

 

The budget hotel giant acquired the eight-storey Victory House on 30-34 Kingsway – a former 1920s office building – from a private overseas investor for an undisclosed sum.

 

The 45,000 sq ft site, currently occupied until spring 2026, is expected to open as a 200-bedroom Hub by Premier Inn hotel in 2028, subject to planning permission from Camden Council.

 

The hotel will offer views over Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Covent Garden, though some Hub by Premier Inn properties are known for their windowless, budget offering.

 

Whitbread revealed plans to fit each bedroom within the existing floorplates to retain the original architectural features of the building, while also incorporating heat recovery systems and air source heat pumps to align with the group’s sustainability strategy.

 

The off-market purchase will add close to 1,000 Premier Inn and Hub by Premier Inn bedrooms into Whitbread’s development pipeline.

 

Whitbread has been investing heavily in London over the past year, having acquired four former office buildings for conversion into budget hotels totalling more than £100m, including the flagship 690-room Hub on Strand next to Trafalgar Square.

 

Roughly a fifth of Whitbread’s 85,000 bedrooms are based in London.

 

Jonathan Langdon, senior acquisition manager for Whitbread, said: “The vision behind Hub by Premier Inn is to offer all the great things about Premier Inn in the most central, accessible and exciting places. Kingsway is one of those stand-out locations being surrounded by London’s best entertainment, restaurants, cultural venues and institutions – somewhere we know our customers will want to stay.   

 

“Investing here matches our network plan and complements our trading and pipeline hotels, neatly ‘bookending’ Covent Garden with our St Martin’s Lane hotel to the west. It also rounds off an especially active year for Whitbread in Central and Inner London where we have made four significant purchases and lease commitments, collectively totalling more than £100m of investment and adding close to 1,000 prime located rooms into our pipeline.” 

 

Launched on Saint Martin’s Lane in Covent Garden in 2014, the Hub by Premier Inn brand now offers 18 hotels and more than 3,000 bedrooms in locations across central London and Edinburgh.

 

Hub by Premier Inn hotels tend to offer smaller rooms in exchange for affordability in prime city-centre locations.

 

Whitbread was advised on the transaction by Ingleby Trice and the vendor was advised by JLL and Savills.

 

Whitbread is the owner of Premier Inn, which operates 850 budget hotels across the UK and beyond.