WHITBREAD, the leisure operator behind the David Lloyd and Brewers Fayre brands, has acquired seven Holiday Inns for £34.5 million with the aim of converting the properties to its own Premier Travel Inn (PTI) chain.

The acquisition, announced yesterday, is the first since Alan Parker, Whitbread’s chief executive, unveiled plans to boost PTI’s pipeline of new sites by including for the first time conversions from existing hotels rather than only build new ones.

The seven hotels, which have a total of 1,021 rooms, will be converted to the PTI brand over the next six months.

The seven hotels formed part of a package of 73 hotels, mainly Holiday Inns, sold by InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) a year ago to LRG Acquisition for £1.022 billion.

LRG, a consortium comprising Realstar Group, Lehman Brothers Real Estate Partners and GIC Real Estate, has retained IHG as operator to 62 of the hotels. It put the other 11 hotels up for sale through Christie & Co, the property agent, in October after a review concluded that they would require signficant investment to meet Holiday Inn brand standards.

The addition of the seven Holiday Inns will boost Whitbread’s recently increased target of adding 15,000 PTI rooms by end of 2010 to its existing total of 30,000.

Separately, Whitbread is seeking to sell its remaining interest in 46 Marriott hotels in Britain, jointly owned with Marriott International, the American hotel operator.

It is understood that a deal worth about £1 billion is being negotiated with Royal Bank of Scotland and a consortium of Israeli investors led by Egal Ahouvi, the lawyer who recently oversaw the acquisition of 16 Hilton hotels in Britain in a so-called sale and manage-back deal worth almost £400 million.

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