UK's biggest host plays safe and still delivers - even at T5

When he became CEO in 2004, he set about dismantling the group. He had his upmarket brands all right, in Marriott hotels and David Lloyd Leisure clubs, and he sold them. For David Lloyd, he obtained £925 million, a whopping sum. Out too went Pizza Hut UK, Britvic and TGI Friday's. He even sold Sam Whitbread's historic City brewery in Chiswell Street.

This is the new Whitbread. As if to emphasise the difference, we're sitting in a small corporate suite in the West End (the main office is in Dunstable). When our coffee is brought it's Costa, naturally. I take a sip and pull a face. Horrible. For a moment, Parker looks genuinely horrified. Then I say, "just kidding". He tries to laugh.

The coffee is actually very good. "It's roasted in Lambeth - has been for 25 years - and is exported to over 20 countries," he says proudly.

He was telling me about the hotels and I interrupted his flow. "Premium Inns trade at half the price of Hiltons, Holiday Inns and Marriotts. We offer the same facilities but without the swimming pools and fitness spas. The bedrooms are good, well-appointed and clean. Guests can eat in our good value restaurants. We've got the highest occupancy in the country, of 80%."

It's all about, he says, "appealing to the man on the Clapham omnibus. We appeal to the businessman as much as to families on the move. Mid-week, demand has never been higher."

He points to the coffee cup in front of him. "Do you know what was the one thing that performed at T5?" It has to be the Costa coffee. He nods. "You're right. It's the highest-performing Costa in the world. It took over £60,000 in its first week."

Of course it won't bother him that our own architectural critic, Rowan Moore, described the new terminal's Costa thus: "It was meant to be a point where people feel good about arriving in Britain and where the dreary processes of air travel are at last relived, but the coffee stall rises to the occasion not at all. Sticking doggedly to the Costa identity, it presents soft furnishings suitable for a ring-road hotel foyer and cheap graphics. It punctures the splendour around it with deadly bathos. 'Welcome to Britain,' it says, 'land of the identikit coffee chain.'"

Parker has been in the trade all his life. His parents ran the Arsenal Cafe on the Holloway Road in north London. What sort of place was it? "A workingmen's cafe." You mean a greasy-spoon? "My mother would be rotating in her grave if she could hear you say that."

He's a north Londoner through and through, a Gooner who would have been at the Arsenal-Liverpool game on Saturday ("I went to my first match when I was seven") but for being out of town, indulging in another passion, horseracing at the Grand National.

These days, he lives in the more genteel surroundings of the Wentworth Estate in Surrey and in Majorca. He met his wife, Pauline, when she worked in the hotel business and they have two grownup children. He also plays golf ("I live on the course but don't have time to play") and sails.

For five years, he went away to boarding school in Devon. He always wanted to go into the industry and studied for a degree in hotel and catering management, one of the first such courses in the country, at Surrey University. He saw it as "a great opportunity to build a career in an industry which, frankly, didn't seem to be over-endowed with talent at that time".

His first job was as a graduate trainee at the Truman brewery in Brick Lane. "I was assistant to the general manager of the managed house division." He later ran Holiday Inns in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He also went to Harvard on the advanced management programme. In 1992, he shocked his colleagues by quitting Holiday Inn to start Whitbread's hotel arm. "When I joined Whitbread it was still perceived as a brewer. I was asked to form the hotel business and I made it the biggest part of the group."

At that stage, his ambition was to be "a main board director of Whitbread and to run the country's largest hotels operation". He realised that and went on to be chief executive. He shrugs. "I was in the right place at the right time."

Does he regret doing away with his legacy, such as Chiswell Street? "No, the past is the past. We've survived and thrived. It's important we keep up with demand and make the highest returns for our shareholders." Listen, he says, "when Sam Whitbread first began brewing he was the world's first mass-producing brewer. The company was leading edge back then and it is now".

Whitbread aims at the "New Britain, where people eat out regularly, stay in hotels and go to coffee bars." Take Costa. "We have a very real opportunity to be the next Starbucks. Except our coffee is different - we roast it ourselves and each cup is handmade by the baristas. We have the opportunity to be a truly worldwide brand."

By making the disposals he has, he's created a tightly-focused group. He's almost certainly managed to avoid the attentions of private equity who would dearly have loved to have got their hands on such a lucrative break-up.

Recently, he held talks with Dubai International Capital, owner of Travelodge, about buying their budget chain. They put a price tag of £900 million on Travelodge and he wasn't interested - it was too much. He's that sort, is Parker. Cautious, not easily swayed by others, unafraid to be unfashionable.

At 61, he has no immediate plans to retire. "Why would I? I've got the best job in the country. I'm enjoying every minute." On the way back to the office I pass a Whitbread van. Underneath the logo is a caption: "Welcome with a smile." Alan Partridge would give it a cheery wave.