Whitbread, the owner of Premier Inn, has acquired six hotels from Golden Tulip and has secured a pipeline of nine further sites for a total of £44m.

The six hotels currently trading – in Glasgow, Newcastle, Portsmouth, Dublin and Manchester – had an EBITDA of £2.3m last year, and comprise 770 rooms. The nine new hotels, totalling 1,300 rooms, are expected to open in the next two years.

The 15 hotels will all be converted to the Premier Inn brand, at a cost of £9m.

Alan Parker, chief executive of Whitbread, said: “Once rebranded and integrated into our Premier Inn portfolio, our focus will be on occupancy and securing further sites in the pipeline over and above these 15 hotels.

“We will now have our first Premier Inn in the Republic of Ireland and will be looking for other opportunities in that country.”