Whitbread, the owner of Premier Inn, is planning to reduce its customer support and call centre teams by approximately 300 jobs and shift some roles overseas.
The company stated that its guest reservations team would be outsourced, pending consultation, and that half of the calls it receives are already handled by an overseas partner.
Whitbread's head office, along with its guest relations team in Houghton Regis, will remain based in the UK.
The group stated that it aimed to improve 'efficiency' and anticipated that around 150 roles would be redeployed within 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 as part of broader job cuts at Whitbread, which last year announced plans to reduce around 1,500 UK roles while offloading approximately 120 branded restaurants and converting 112 sites into new hotel rooms.
Last year, the company sold 51 restaurants operating under brands like Brewers Fayre and Beefeater for £56m.
In its third-quarter trading results, Whitbread reported a 2% drop in group sales to £763m, citing an “expected reduction” in food and beverage sales.
