Whitbread
Senior Location Strategy & Planning Analyst
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Job Title: Senior Location Strategy Analyst
Contract Type: Permanent
Location: Head office Dunstable LU5
Hybrid working: 3 days a week in the office
About the Role
This role leads the development, maintenance, and continuous improvement of the UK Location Strategy and Network Plan for Premier Inn and hub, transforming complex market, demand, and competitive insight into clear, investment-ready decisions that shape Whitbread’s long-term growth. Acting as a vital bridge between strategy, analytics, and delivery, it ensures the business invests in the right locations, formats, and priorities to maximize sustainable returns. A key focus of the role is modernizing Whitbread’s location strategy modeling capabilities—bringing automation, scalable tools, and AI-enabled analytics into the heart of decision-making. Commercial judgement is applied throughout, grounding recommendations in real-world trading dynamics, investment considerations, and long-term value creation. As the network evolves, the role will continue to grow, shaping how Whitbread identifies, evaluates, and delivers future opportunities.
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Key Responsibilities
- Lead Location Strategy: Own and evolve the UK Location Strategy and Network Plan, defining where to grow, what to build, and how large, while balancing returns, risk, and brand priorities.
- Shape Market Insight: Act as the subject-matter expert on UK hotel market dynamics, producing quarterly outlooks and governing competitor and market datasets to maintain a single source of truth.
- Drive Strategic Modelling: Own and enhance core growth potential and network models, translating outputs into clear strategic choices, and continuously improving assumptions, inputs, and governance.
- Modernise Analytics: Lead the shift toward automated, scalable, and AI-enabled modeling, applying machine-learning techniques to strengthen forecasting, scenario testing, and cannibalisation logic while keeping outputs explainable.
- Influence Senior Stakeholders: Partner with Property, Finance, and Strategy teams to guide investment decisions, applying commercial judgement across all areas to maximize long-term value creation.
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Benefits
- Bonus potential up to 20%
- Pension contributions matched up to 10%
- Up to 60% off stays with Premier Inn and Hub
Requirements
- Ability to take full end-to-end ownership of the Strategic Growth Plan, working with stakeholders across acquisition, delivery, insight, and strategy teams to align inputs and translate market, demand, and supply insights into clear, actionable growth recommendations.
- Experience owning and maintaining strategic datasets, ensuring data quality, governance, and accuracy across multiple sources to support critical business decisions.
- Strong quantitative modelling and analytical skills (Excel and/or Python), including forecasting, scenario analysis, and investment modelling.
- Ability to build robust location-level insight, integrating demand, supply, competitor, and market dynamics to identify opportunities, risks, and priorities.
- Proven commercial judgement and communication skills, translating complex analysis into clear, evidence-based recommendations that influence investment and strategic decisions.
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