After nearly seven years at the helm of FTSE 100-listed company, CEO Alison Brittain has announced her retirement effective at the end of the financial year 2023.

Whitbread PLC is the owner and manager of the Premier Inn hotel chain. With over 820 hotels in the UK, the brand employs some 30,000 people in its hotels and restaurants. Alison Brittain took over as the company’s CEO in September 2015.

Prior to arriving at Whitbread, she held senior positions at Santander UK PLC, Lloyds Banking Group and Barclays Bank. She was also member of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Group and a non-executive director of Marks & Spencer.

She was named ‘Business Woman of the Year 2017’ in the Veuve Clicquot awards and in 2019 she received a CBE as part of the New Year’s honours list.

Whitbread has lined up Dominic Paul, the current CEO for the UK & Ireland at Domino’s Pizza Group, as her replacement. Mr Paul is expected to start in early January 2023.

She [Brittain] has guided the company brilliantly over that time: developing and then selling Costa for £3.9bn, growing and innovating our award-winning UK customer proposition, firmly establishing Germany to be a substantial engine of future growth, and latterly ably steering the Group and leading our 35,000 colleagues through the pandemic. The strong recovery under Alison's leadership leaves Whitbread very well positioned as a strategic winner in the industry.

Adam Crozier, Chairman of Whitbread PLC

It has been an enormous privilege to lead Whitbread during a period of significant expansion for our well-loved brands, in both the UK and in Germany. The business has recovered from the pandemic well ahead of expectations and is continuing to trade strongly and gain market share. We are well positioned for continued outperformance and future growth, and we have a clear strategy and a strong management team to deliver it. For the last seven years I have been consistently impressed and humbled by the hard work and commitment of our very talented teams and their passion for providing brilliant experiences for our guests every day and I'm immensely grateful to them for everything that they do. I will continue to be fully committed to the business over the next few months until it's time to hand over the baton and I wish Dominic and the whole Whitbread team every success for the future.

Alison Brittain, retiring CEO of Whitbread PLC