Comment: Whitbread's medicine tastes foul but will make Premier Inn stronger in the long run

Witness today’s fundraiser at the owner of the Premier Inn group: buy into our rights issue or your stake gets slashed.

With a choice like that, you’re hardly going to say no.

In fairness, what she takes away with one hand, she’s previously given with the other. Last year, shareholders got £2 billion cash from the proceeds of selling Costa Coffee to Coke.

But what about the rest of us? Should we buy shares in a hotelier at a time customers are locked down and working from home?

Bizarrely, perhaps we should.

Premier Inn will certainly be hit hard in the next year, but in some ways, it will benefit from the crisis. Business travel will return in some form, but you can bet employers will be ruling against five-star luxury. Besides, why pay for a piano bar when the atmosphere’s wrecked by social distancing?

Travellers will opt for budget hotels, and Premier owns the branded market in pretty much all UK cities. Where it doesn’t, thanks to the £1 billion it’s just raised, it will do soon, assuming Travelodge continues struggling with its perennial financial issues.

Germany is the glittering prize, though. The hotels market there is on the brink of a once-in-a-lifetime shift from sticky-carpet B&Bs to branded budget hotels. And Whitbread’s are best of breed.

It currently only has 40 sites there. With its new war chest, if it expands now while land and building costs are Covid-low, shareholders could reap the upside for years to come.