Whitbread's strategic review puts years of ambition on the table as pressure mounts ahead of April results

With activist investors circling, business rates biting and RevPAR softening, Whitbread's 30 April results have become something close to a reckoning. The question facing the FTSE 100 hotel group is not simply whether management can restore momentum in the near term, but whether the strategic architecture built up over the past several years remains fit for purpose at all.