PREMIER Inn’s rapid growth story is set to continue after owner, Whitbread mapped out plans for as many as 900 hotels by the end of 2020.

The budget brand, which currently has 697 hotels – includ-ing a £10.5m, 118-bedroom Premier Inn on Vicar Lane, which opened in 2011 – helped Whitbread to grow underlying profits by 18 per cent to £488.1m in the financial year to February 26.

Whitbread’s expansion plans also include a pledge to raise sales at its Costa coffee business from this year’s £1.4bn to £2.5bn in 2020.

The group said the achievement of its milestones for Costa and Premier Inn would create 15,000 UK jobs in the UK over the next five years.

Premier Inn registered sales growth of 15.3 per cent in the last financial year, with the figure 9.1 per cent higher when excluding the impact of new sites.

Costa’s total sales growth of 17.9 per cent included a rise in UK like-for-like sales of six per cent as the company continued to benefit from Britain’s coffee shop culture.

Whitbread chief executive Andy Harrison, who has announced his intention to leave the company by next February, described the results as “outstanding”. Mr Harrison has run Whitbread since 2010. He said: “We are on track to deliver our 2016 and 2018 growth milestones. Today we have published new growth milestones for 2020 which highlight the scale of the opportunity ahead.”