Premier Inn has announced the acquisition of a new 267-bedroom budget hotel at Stratford, located adjacent to the Olympic Stadium in London, for £25 mln (EUR 29 mln). The hotel will also be the closest hotel to the new Stratford International station which opened in December 2009.

Premier Inn, which is owned by London-listed Whitbread, has acquired 13 budget hotel locations ranging from Greenwich to Islington since the start of 2009. The new hotels are predominately leasehold with a total value of £160 mln. The site in Stratford plus the other new locations will all be open and trading by Summer 2012, boosting Premier Inn's total number of bedrooms by 2,324. In total Premier Inn will have 59 hotels and 8,374 rooms in London by 2012.

Whitbread is expecting to create almost 1,000 new Premier Inn jobs in London between now and summer 2012.