Whitbread appoints two senior leisure property experts

2 min reading time

Published on 22/03/23 - Updated on 22/03/23

Georgina Powell & Neil Haskins

Whitbread has announced the recruitment of Georgina Powell and Neil Haskins to its UK property team. Together, the duo boasts 50 years’ experience in property development, acquisition, and project management in the leisure sector.

The UK’s largest hospitality business currently operates more than 840 Premier Inn and hub by Premier Inn hotels in the UK and Ireland.

As of October 2022, the company has a trading network and committed pipeline of 91,600 bedrooms and is actively searching for more new locations in over 160 British and Irish destinations. Its aim is to reach a potential of 125,000 keys across the two brands in these markets.

Georgina Powell joins the property team as Project and Programme Manager and will work on new-build hotel developments in London and the south of England. She began her career in construction and project management at Gary Powell and Associates in 2002.

After nearly twelve years at the firm, she joined Whitbread Property as Projects and Programmes Manager in 2013. Most recently, Powell was Property Development Manager and then National Maintenance Manager at Costa Coffee for over four years.

Neil Haskins will be tasked with driving Whitbread’s programme of hotel extensions across the UK. He started his career at Whitbread in 1989, where he was responsible for leisure property acquisition and portfolio management.

In 2000, Haskins became a Partner within the Leisure Asset Management team at Gerald Eve. Eight years later, he joined Merlin Entertainments as Property Director. After fifteen years at the visitor attraction operator, he returned to Whitbread in February 2023.

My mission is to grow our estate from 83,000 rooms today towards the long-term network potential of 125,000 Premier Inn and hub by Premier Inn rooms in the UK and Ireland. To do so, we need an expert team to identify new opportunities for growing our brands. We also need construction and project management specialists to develop out the hotels within Whitbread’s secured development pipeline. Georgina and Neil bring a huge amount of experience to Whitbread and I’m grateful to have them back in the team to help grow our estate in popular, sought-after, and often constrained locations for our customers.

Alex Flach, Development Director UK & Ireland at Whitbread

Whitbread

Whitbread

Hotel Group

  • Whitbread United Kingdom
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