Leisure group Whitbread has appointed investment bank Morgan Stanley and CBRE Hotels to sell around £300m of assets from its Marriott Hotels business.

According to The Times, Whitbread is disposing of the business in order to improve poor returns on capital in its four-star hotels but the group would continue to manage the hotels under a long-term contract after the sell-off.

In June 2004, Whitbread confirmed it intended to analyse the structure of its asset base to raise between £150-200m by the end of the year through selling ‘a package of properties’. The group confirmed it would be selling off assets within its Marriott hotel chain, possibly on a sale and leaseback basis.

Meanwhile, in July 2004, Whitbread acquired the Premier Lodge chain of hotels for £505m from the Spirit Group in a deal integrating 132 Premier Lodge hotels with Whitbread’s existing Travel Inn business to create 29,141 rooms of Premier Travel Inns situated in 461 locations around the UK.

Whitbread has already begun an auction of its Courtyard by Marriott Hotels. Full details of the latest assets disposal are expected be revealed by the group’s new chief executive, Alan Parker at the interim results in October. Details: www.whitbread.co.uk