THE CHALLENGE
With clear ambitions for domestic and international growth, Whitbread, owner of Premier Inn, the UK’s biggest hotel brand, recognised that its legacy technology was a barrier. Their 40-year-old Premier Inn booking platform, handling over £2 billion in revenue a year, had become a critical risk—outdated and reliant on a dwindling pool of experts.
Yet Whitbread had tried this transformation before—and failed. This time, success relied on finding the right partner to deliver a seamless, large-scale transformation with minimal disruption to millions of customers.
OUR APPROACH
Gate One was chosen as the trusted transformation partner for the project:
- Help Whitbread to retire the 40-year-old system that was deeply embedded.
- Roll out a new, off-the-shelf system requiring a complete website rebuild for 900 hotels across the UK and Germany.
- Manage the migration and change management of transferring all 900 hotels from the old platform to the new.
- Integrate with 60 other systems (finance, HR, security, reporting, etc.).
- Drive the Project Management Office (PMO), leading the development and delivery of training 15,000 employees on the new platform.
- Decommission the old platform, considering GDPR and data confidentiality.
- Collaborating with external partners and Whitbread to co-create the vision, we developed a business and customer-centric governance and delivery approach, embedding functional SMEs at every step.
The multi-transformation project had over 1,500 requirements – impacting 42 systems, 52 integrations, 35,000 employees and over 250 processes.
KEY RESULTS
In just 18 months, Gate One supported Premier Inn’s continued growth and operation.
- Revolutionised the ageing end-to-end technology stack. Without this, the business would no longer exist—the product was over 40 years old and written in a coding language known only to three remaining people in the organisation.
- Improved business processes and automation with a new intuitive system. Huge commercial potential was unlocked through a modern website design allowing for a/b testing, better tracking, basket functionality and upsell opportunities.
- Foundations set for future changes and initiatives. The Opera programme is regarded as the single best example of a successful business transformation programme. The governance, approach and structures are now embedded in all future change programmes at Whitbread.
WIDER IMPACT
Whitbread’s technology transformation improved all aspects of the customer journey, from booking to post-stay, increasing direct bookings and new monetisation opportunities. Our partnership with Whitbread supported the successful implementation of their global technology stack, improving long-term scalability, resilience and flexibility of the business.
