British leisure group Whitbread is to invest more than £30 million (€45 million) in rolling out up to 20 restaurants and hotels across Northern Ireland.
The expansion, which will create around 500 jobs over the next three to five years, will see the Whitbread-owned Premier Travel inns and a number of Brewers Fayre restaurants open throughout the North.
According to property consultants Osborne King & Megran, which has been hired to identify and acquire suitable sites and properties, a site has been secured on Belfast's Adelaide Street for a 150-bedroom Premier Travel inn, Whitbread's budget hotel brand.
A 50-bedroom inn and Brewers Fayre restaurant is also planned for a site in Carrickfergus with development due to start at the end of July
Osborne is also in negotiations to open an inn and restaurants in Coleraine, while a Brewers Fayre restaurant is planned for the Junction One factory outlet in Antrim, according to Mr John Martin, head of Osborne's licensed premises division.
Whitbread, whose UK brands include Beefeater restaurants, Pizza Hut, TGI Fridays, Costa Coffee and David Lloyd fitness clubs, has been mulling over a move into the North for some time. It has 450 Premier Travel inns across Britain and more than 400 Brewers Fayre pub/restaurants.
"We've been giving serious consideration to entering the Northern Ireland market for a number of years and the time now seems right to launch what has been a highly successful leisure concept for us in the rest of the UK," Whitbread's regional acquisition manager Beverly Batty said.
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