Whitbread Reviews

Plenty of good learning opportunities

• While the people are very nice there is, in my opinion, a lack of top talent at the company. There are very few employees from top universities and this is even more true at senior grades and, unfortunately, it shows with the quality of work produced around the business. • There is a very ‘if your face fits’ culture. Some junior employees enjoy promotions they probably don’t deserve while higher quality employees get glossed over. They don’t take the time to explain why a junior employee is promoted so rapidly and there are no performance metric to justify the decision. Unfortunately, from my position, it does often look like more senior men are promoting junior men who remind them of them. Which in turn means glossing over high performing women. • Senior management is woefully poor. I really wanted to write that senior management is outstanding but, unfortunately, I can’t. Alison, the CEO, has a background in finance not hospitality and the lack of experience is apparent. The entire board seem to be out of ideas to the extent that they are looking at innovations of, historically, much poorer competitors to see what changes can be made at Premier Inn. It’s a sorry state of affairs. • Due to the above factors the company has endured a very tough year and this looks set to continue in the medium term. The company feels rudderless in what is a very buoyant market.