Hotel and restaurant group Whitbread has asked landlords for a 50% rent cut for the next three months as pandemic restrictions continue to hit trading.
The owner of the Premier Inn, Beefeater and Brewers Fayre brands said in a letter to landlords they must “share some of the pain” of lockdown.
Britain’s biggest hospitality group, with 800 hotels in the UK and Ireland, had already warned of big job cuts.
Landlords and commercial property investors will likely resist rent cuts.
They have seen their own finances depleted by rent cuts and restructurings across the hospitality sector. Unlike many rivals, Whitbread had continued to pay rent in full.
Andrew Jones, chief executive of LondonMetric, a FTSE 250 property company with a Premier Inn tenant, said Whitbread has “behaved impeccably” towards to landlords “and so we will look to help them with their cash flow whilst the business recovers”.
But he added: … Read the rest
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