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TWST: Can we begin with a quick introduction to Whitbread Hotels (London:WTB.L)?

Mr. Parker: The Whitbread Hotel Company is one of the three divisions of Whitbread. The Whitbread Company was founded back in 1750. So, the company is slightly older than the United States. Within the hotels division we operate 2 major brands – the budget Travel Inn chain with some 17,000 rooms and the Marriott chain under franchise, which is 60 hotels. We are the biggest hotel operator in the UK.

TWST: What is your insight into the current condition of the hotel industry and what do you see as the most significant developments over the next few years?

Mr. Parker: The market at the moment in terms of international travel is really kind of holding its breath, I think, and waiting to see the outcome of the Iraqi war situations. So, I think we are in a very extraordinary time just now. But we hope that the situation will be resolved quickly and the market then will bounce back stronger than when we went into it.

TWST: And can you elaborate on your strategy for implementing technology and give us an idea what are your future objectives for utilizing e-commerce?

Mr. Parker: For Travel Inn, twelve months ago we introduced a new state-of-the-art reservation system and that has enabled us to see the number of bookings build up to 20% now, and that is continuing; every month that goes by, that increases even further. As far as our Marriott hotels are concerned, we introduced a new system called Delphi for event and conference booking in the last twelve months. It is a web-based system which facilitates cross sell between all our Marriott properties.

TWST: Are there any other significant factors that have helped your recent operating margins?

Mr. Parker: Yes. Again in Marriott, we introduced a project to reduce some of our back office cost over the last twelve months and we did that by clustering certain administrative functions such as finance and human resources and property and maintenance management amongst small groups of hotels on a geographical basis and have managed to both reduce our cost and improve our margins marginally here by nearly 1%. But we have done that by back office cost reduction and not by any customer facing or service reductions at all.

TWST: What are the key elements of your corporate strategy to exploit the market situation?

Mr. Parker: Well, the market in the UK for leisure travel has remained strong and we are focusing on developing market share of that at the moment. It's both a strong market and one which we are developing share in and will be concentrating on that until we see that international travel come back.

TWST: Are there any other markets strategies that you are looking to employ to stay competitive over the next 12-24 months?

Mr. Parker: In Travel Inn, we have ambitious growth plans for the UK to ensure we retain our market leading position. We have a number of major hotels opening in the next three months, the biggest of which is a 600 room Travel Inn at Heathrow international airport. We think that will be both a great success story in itself because it will be the most competitive hotel at Heathrow, but probably more importantly, it will help to develop awareness for the Travel Inn brand at UK leading airports. So we see that as being quite a step forward for the company. We also have other hotels opening in London and in some provincial cities as well.

TWST: Can you summarize some of your company’s long-term and short-term goals that you’ve set?

Mr. Parker: Our longterm Vision is to be the UK’s favourite hotel company for associates, customers and investors and we aim to retain our position as being the leading hotel company in the UK. Short term, I think it is looking for the recovery in the full service sector in our Marriott Hotels. And I have already commented on the way to do that through focusing both in the immediate term on domestic leisure travel and then concentrate on the conference and events market. In the longterm, we aim to capitalize on the return of the international Trans-Atlantic market when it comes back, and exploit the position of the Marriott brand as the number one choice for the business traveler.