Whitbread confirms 300 job cuts as call centre moves overseas

Premier Inn owner Whitbread is planning to cut around 300 jobs in its customer support and call centre teams and move some roles overseas.

The company said its guest reservations team was being outsourced, subject to a consultation, and half the calls it received were already answered by an overseas partner.

Whitbread’s head office, including its guest relations team in Houghton Regis, will remain in the UK.

The group said it was looking to improve “efficiency” and expected around 150 roles to be redeployed elsewhere in the business.

A Whitbread spokesperson said: “Our position as the UK’s leading hospitality business, has been founded upon our ability to adapt and evolve. Focused on delivering exceptional value for our guests, we continuously explore ways to improve efficiency while maintaining and investing in our market-leading guest experience.

“We have begun a consultation process which will involve proposed changes to some of our support centre and contact centre teams. Overall, we are proposing a reduction of around 300 roles in these areas.

"However, we expect to redeploy roughly half of those affected by the proposed changes to other roles elsewhere in the group.

“These proposals will bring our support centre closer to our operations and unlock value that can then be reinvested to enhance our market-leading guest experience further.”

The move comes amid wider jobs cuts at Whitbread, which last year said it was looking to axe around 1,500 UK roles as part of plans to offload around 120 branded restaurants and convert 112 sites into new hotel rooms.

The company sold 51 restaurants operating under brands such as Brewers Fayre and Beefeater for £56m last year.

In its third quarter trading results, Whitbread said group sales had dropped 2% to £763m due to an “expected reduction” in food and beverage sales.

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