Whitbread has acquired Victory House on Kingsway in central London for conversion into a new hub by Premier Inn hotel, continuing its expansion of budget hotel capacity across the capital.
The freehold office building was bought from a private overseas investor for an undisclosed sum.
It said the property at 30–34 Kingsway fits the company’s network plan for the Covent Garden and Holborn area and is within walking distance of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the London School of Economics campus and the West End theatre district.
The 45,000 sq ft office block is occupied until spring 2026, after which Whitbread intends to convert it into a hotel of around 200 bedrooms, subject to planning. The company aims to retain the 1920s stone façade on Kingsway.
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The off-market deal concludes an active year for Whitbread in central and inner London. Since February 2025 it has bought four former office buildings for conversion into Premier Inn and hub by Premier Inn hotels, committing more than £100m to the programme.
Together, the sites will add close to 1,000 rooms to the group’s secured development pipeline. Currently 19% of Whitbread’s 85,000 bedrooms are located in London.
Senior acquisition manager Jonathan Langdon said: “The vision behind hub by Premier Inn is to offer all the great things about Premier Inn in the most central, accessible and exciting places. Kingsway is one of those stand-out locations being surrounded by London’s best entertainment, restaurants, cultural venues and institutions – somewhere we know our customers will want to stay.
“Investing here matches our network plan and complements our trading and pipeline hotels, neatly bookending Covent Garden with our St Martin’s Lane hotel to the west. It also rounds off an especially active year for Whitbread in central and inner London where we have made four significant purchases and lease commitments, collectively totalling more than £100 million of investment and adding close to 1,000 prime located rooms into our pipeline.”
He added: “We’re pleased to have secured the Kingsway location quickly off-market and are excited to begin the planning journey with Camden Council next year, with a goal to bring the location onto our trading network in 2028.”
Hub by Premier Inn is designed for high-cost city locations by using a compact room format to keep prices lower while maintaining long-term returns. Since launching on St Martin’s Lane in 2014, the brand has expanded to eighteen hotels and more than 3,000 rooms across central London and Edinburgh.
Four additional London sites are under construction or in advanced planning, including a flagship 690-room hotel on the Strand near Trafalgar Square.
The Kingsway site will offer views over Lincoln’s Inn Fields and is expected to be handed over to Whitbread in April 2026 when the existing lease expires. Conversations with Camden Council on the conversion of the eight-storey building are expected to begin in early 2026.
