Whitbread, the leisure group, will announce plans today to invest £100 million developing nine new Premier Inns as it exploits the availability of sites previously earmarked for office and residential development.

The new sites, a mixture of freeholds and leaseholds, include office block conversions in Preston and Doncaster and two development opportunities in London - in Greenwich and Aldgate - that until recently would normally have been destined for conversion to flats or offices.

Mark Anderson, Whitbread's property director, said that the number of such possibilities being presented to him in recent months had risen noticeably. “About a quarter of all opportunities put to us are former office or residential developments,” he said.

Mr Anderson said that the decline of the residential and commercial property markets had released a host of sites that would not normally be available for hotel use. This, in turn, had driven down rentals to a level that was more suitable to a budget hotel model.

He added that, at a time when many companies were struggling, Whitbread's strong covenant and Premier Inn's resilient trading were becoming more attractive to property developers looking for tenants ready to take on standard institutional leases of between 20 and 25 years.

The nine new Premier Inns include five that will have a pub-restaurant built next door.

Whitbread said that, together with other recent acquisitions, the two new London sites would allow Premier Inn to retain its position as the biggest hotel chain in the capital by the time of the 2012 Olympic Games, with at least 8,500 rooms.

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