Good morning. I'm Alison Brittain. I'd like to welcome you to Whitbread's full year results presentation. Today's presentation will take place by remote webcast, followed by a live question and answer session at 9:15 A.M., when Nicholas Cadbury and I will be delighted to answer your questions. Details of how to join us for the Q&A can be found on our website. Turning to our agenda this morning, I'll start by taking you through our operational performance during the year, our response to COVID-19, and why we're well-positioned for recovery. I'll then hand over to Nicholas to go through our financial performance for the year, our strong balance sheet, and our guidance for the year ahead. I'll finish by covering our strategy to drive long-term shareholder value. The year just gone has been one of the most challenging years in our 279-year history, with COVID-19 restrictions having a significant impact on our operations and our financial performance. Despite these challenges, the advantages of our unique operating and market-leading direct distribution models, along with the strength of our balance sheet and our brand, have enabled us to weather the severe financial impact of the pandemic, materially outperform the U.K. hotel market and deliver strong market share gains, and prepare to reinvest in the business to consolidate our position as a sector winner. In Germany, we capitalized on the opportunity to grow the estate during lockdown, growing from six open hotels at the start of the year to 30 hotels today, and with a pipeline of a further 42 hotels. At the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, we focused on reacting, protecting, and restoring our business. Our business model enabled us to rapidly respond to the changing restrictions and to quickly adapt our operations as required, prioritizing the health and safety of our colleagues and our guests, and also helping the national effort by keeping hotels open for key workers. We took rapid and decisive action to protect our balance sheet and liquidity, including eliminating discretionary spend, renegotiating debt covenants, completing our GBP 1 billion rights issue, and restructuring debt with a GBP 550 million green bond issuance. These actions combine to ensure that our balance sheet strength and financial flexibility remains a significant competitive advantage. We are now looking forward to welcoming back leisure guests from the 17th of May in the U.K. in both our hotels and restaurants and moving into the next stage of our recovery, which we call Investing to Win. We will invest over GBP 350 million over this financial year at a time when others will be constrained. We have a long track record and deep expertise in investing in a disciplined way and driving consistently superior returns. Our previous experience of investing through the cycle sets us up for many years of market outperformance. We will invest in commercial initiatives to drive demand to our hotels and restaurants, and we have launched an exciting new marketing campaign, Rest Easy, which I'll cover in more detail later in the presentation. We're continuing to invest in room refurbishments and upgrades, ensuring that our guest experience remains strong, and we are expanding our pipeline in Germany, giving us a national network that enables us to accelerate our Premier Inn brand build. It's critically important that we remain focused on ensuring we have a lean and agile cost base, and we're now extending our longstanding efficiency program to target an additional GBP 100 million of cost savings that will be delivered over the next three years. We believe that our long-term strategy is highly compelling. We see a significant opportunity for our business to leverage the competitive advantages of our ownership model, leading brand, direct distribution, and broad customer reach, and we already have clear evidence of this in our strong performance versus the market. Our strong financial position gives Whitbread the confidence to invest to take advantage of the enhanced structural opportunities that will undoubtedly exist in both the U.K. and in Germany. In Germany, the acceleration of our network growth this year means we've created a platform to take market share, to replicate our U.K. success, and to achieve our ambition to become the number one budget hotel operator in the market. This is all underpinned by our long-established Force for Good ESG program, reflecting our commitment to operate responsibly and sustainably and ensuring that we continue to make a positive impact for our employees, customers, suppliers, investors, communities, and the environment. This slide shows the significant impact that COVID-19 restrictions had on our U.K. occupancy levels through the year from March 2020 to March 2021. As you can see, occupancy levels were significantly down from our usual levels in the high 70%. Throughout the year, we've experienced continuously evolving government restrictions that have, at times, been extremely complex. It's been a tremendous team effort by everyone in the business to navigate this exceptionally challenging environment. It's this team effort that allowed us to rapidly adapt our operations and customer offer in response to the changes and helped position us in the best possible way, the benefits of which we'll see on the next slide. I'm extremely proud of and grateful to our teams for their resilience during this difficult period, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their incredible hard work and commitment. Despite the COVID restrictions and tough operating conditions, our strong brand, market-leading direct distribution model, and rapid response to COVID led us to consistently and materially outperform the mid-scale and economy market in the U.K. This outperformance is clear and is measured against a competitor set that, with the exception of November and December, has similar numbers of open hotels. This outperformance has driven impressive market share gains against the total hotel market, with market share of 14.7% in February, up almost 7 percentage points year-over-year. An element of these market share gains will be driven by a proportion of 4 and 5-star hotels remaining closed. However, we expect to continue to outperform the mid-scale and economy market and deliver meaningful market share gains throughout this year and into the longer term. As we look forward, the current successful rollout of the vaccination program in the U.K. means that we can start to form a clearer view of what the hotel market recovery in the U.K. might look like. Of course, there's still a high level of uncertainty, and so we can't yet provide a short-term sales outlook, and we will continue to plan around a number of different scenarios. We are well-positioned for the recovery phase, and in this slide, we've tried to illustrate a simple way to think about the recovery for Premier Inn. As of today, we have around 92% of our hotels open, representing about 85% of our rooms, albeit at low occupancy, and we have 114 restaurants open primarily for outdoor service. Leisure overnight stays are set to be allowed from the 17th of May, along with indoor dining, at which point we expect to have the vast majority of our hotels and restaurants open. As a reminder, our guest mix is broadly 50% leisure and 50% business. We anticipate strong leisure demand during the summer, particularly in coastal and other tourist locations, which represent about 15% of our total hotel estate. Whilst this leisure bounce is expected to be significant, an overall recovery in leisure demand will require the return of unrestricted events, including sporting events, weddings, and other leisure activities. Our business guests split broadly 50/50 between tradespeople who have to be physically present to perform their job and office-based workers. In both segments, we have a very broad customer mix. Trade business demand has been relatively resilient, albeit still below pre-COVID levels. We expect to see a continued gradual recovery. However, our expectation is that office-based business demand doesn't start to recover until offices reopen in earnest, which is probably from September onwards. Over 90% of our bookings come from domestic guests. Domestic demand, both leisure and business, is expected to recover significantly quicker than international demand. The group's overall expectations are for Premier Inn U.K. like-for-like RevPAR to recover to pre-COVID levels by 2023. The U.K. market remains a highly compelling long-term growth opportunity for Premier Inn, and we hold a uniquely advantaged position as, by some margin, we're the largest operator with the strongest brand. Our scale delivers efficiency and customer choice, and our incredibly strong brand drives repeat bookings and market-leading levels of direct distribution. Our best-in-class operations and ownership model means we access every aspect of the hotel value chain and retain all of the profits, which provides us with a competitive advantage. The U.K. market is characterized by compelling structural growth opportunities, with an independent sector already in long-term decline and weakened further by the impact of the COVID crisis. We are well-placed to capitalize on the expected contraction in competitor supply and to take market share. In the long term, we have line of sight to 110,000 rooms in the U.K., providing a long runway of growth and the opportunity to deliver good returns. We have a unique platform in the U.K. that sets us apart from all of our competitors. We will continue to invest in our estate, both refurbishments and high-returning upgraded Premier Plus rooms, meaning that we will remain well-placed to reinforce our leading position. Turning to Germany. In the short term, the market in Germany remains challenging, set against a complex framework of national and federal restrictions. The impact of COVID on the hotel sector has been very similar to that in the U.K. until the start of 2021. Since then, however, the slower rollout of vaccines and the political uncertainty is weighing on the pace of recovery, which is likely to lag behind the U.K. by several months. That said, like the U.K., the budget market is outperforming the rest of the sector and is likely to recover the fastest when the market does reopen. Whilst COVID-19 restrictions have impacted our ability to operate our hotels throughout the year, we have used this period to materially accelerate the growth of our hotel estate in Germany and build a business that is many times larger than it was 12 months ago. During the year, we grew our estate from six hotels to 30 hotels, and now have a committed pipeline of a further 42 hotels. We also took advantage of the subdued demand to refurbish and rebrand our acquired hotels ahead of original plans. Our significantly enlarged estate now provides us with a very strong platform from which to grow our brand presence when the German hotel market reopens and demand returns. We have a presence in most major towns and cities, meaning that the Premier Inn brand will now have a good scale and be seen throughout Germany. As the estate continues to grow, we can turn our focus to brand building with nationwide marketing campaigns and new corporate relationships supplementing our already effective local brand campaigns. Whitbread has a clear long-term strategy to create value. The impact of the COVID pandemic on the sector will be significant and will change the competitive landscape with a likely material slowdown in room growth, a constrained competitor set with significantly reduced future investment opportunity, and an acceleration in the structural decline of the independent sector. These factors will represent opportunity for Whitbread as we have the financial flexibility to invest to win. We have a track record of deploying capital with discipline and with a focus on strong returns, and this will continue. We're also taking steps to ensure our cost base is agile and can respond quickly to changes in demand. We have significant opportunities both to grow and to optimize our large network in the U.K., while Germany offers enormous potential for structural growth. We're progressing our target of being the number one budget hotel operator in Germany. I'll now hand over to Nicholas to talk you through the financials. After that, I will talk in more detail about Whitbread's strategy to deliver long-term value. Thank you, Alison. Good morning, everyone. Our financial performance reflects the significant COVID-19 restrictions in place across the year, both in the U.K. and in Germany, with a sales to profit conversion in line with the guidance we've given throughout the year. With the closures of the hotels and restaurants for much of the first half of the year, and then operating with increasing restrictions in the second half, the statutory revenue was down 71.5% year-on-year. We had other income of GBP 154 million, which was predominantly from the benefit we received from the government's Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, which was in place for longer than we anticipated. Operating costs were of course substantially lower than last year, driven by discretionary cost savings, the reduction in sales related costs, the suspension of business rates, and the actions we took to reduce labor costs in our support centers and across our sites. The decline in revenue, partly offset by the cost reductions, led to an adjusted loss before tax of GBP 635 million. As mentioned in our half year results, we also had non-cash adjusting items, including an impairment of GBP 348 million triggered by COVID-19. The adjusting items were predominantly impairment of goodwill in Germany and other assets in the U.K. The quantum of this impairment charge is largely due to the lower sales we expect in the market in the near term and an increase in the discount rate reflecting the greater volatility in our sector. We finished the year with a strong balance sheet and with a good liquidity position with over GBP 1 billion of cash and access to an undrawn revolving credit facility of GBP 950 million. Since the beginning of the crisis, we have worked extensively to protect our business and strengthen our financial position. We quickly took action to minimize cash outflow and preserve cash. With discretionary P&L spend paused, repairs and maintenance spend kept to a minimum, and most non-committed development expenditure rephased. Voluntary temporary pay reductions were taken by the senior team and salaried staff's pay was frozen, and a final dividend for last year was not declared by the board. We also reduced our central office headcount by 13%, and in our hotels and restaurants, we introduced a new, more flexible labor model to ensure that our labor costs can respond more effectively to changes in demand. To further strengthen our financial position, we've utilized government support packages, including the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and the business rates holiday in the U.K. and the Kurzarbeit in Germany. We entered last year with low debt leverage and then protected ourselves further through the rights issue in June and strengthened our financial position further with a bond issue in February this year. On the right-hand side of this slide, you can see that we continue to strive to make the company more efficient and offset most of the inflation in our sector. The next phase of this program will see us deliver GBP 100 million worth of ongoing efficiency over the next three years through a mix of international procurement, benefiting as we scale up in Germany, site optimization, further alignment of the operations in our hotels and restaurants, and continuing to improve the efficiency of our labor model. Protecting liquidity and taking these actions will ensure we exit the crisis as a strong and more resilient business and will help us get back to our pre-COVID-19 U.K. margins, at least during 2024. Turning to our cash flow. Our cash flow again reflects the COVID-19 restrictions in place for much of the year. This chart shows a waterfall from our EBITDA on the left to our FY 2021 total cash flow on the right. Going from left to right, our EBITDA was an outflow of GBP 195 million. We had working capital outflow of GBP 100 million, principally due to reduction in customer deposits in line with demand. After the rent payments, operating cash outflow was GBP 489 million. Our net cash outflow was GBP 705 million after capital expenditure of GBP 230 million. All of these were in line with the sensitivity guidance we gave in May last year. On the right, you can see the benefit from the rights issue and the bond giving us an overall cash inflow of just under GBP 750 million. On the bottom left of the chart, you can see that we started the year with net debt of GBP 323 million, which together with a cash inflow, debt repayment, and bond issue, resulted in net debt at the end of the year of GBP 47 million. On the bottom right, our liquidity position remains strong with GBP 1.2 billion of cash and an undrawn revolving credit facility of GBP 950 million, taking our total liquidity to more than GBP 2 billion. Again, in line with guidance, our U.K. hotels were cash flow positive when leisure travel was permitted in the summer and when occupancy was 55% or above. Maintaining robust liquidity and a strong balance sheet is paramount and has held us in good stead over many years. We have taken proactive action throughout the year, supported by our relationship banks, who I would like to thank. In February this year, we extended the maturity of our credit facility to September 2023 and extended the covenant waiver period by 12 months, meaning the financial covenants will now not be tested until March 2023. The credit facility size, which is currently GBP 950 million, will step down to GBP 850 million in December 2021 and to GBP 725 million in September 2022, continuing to provide us with good liquidity. In August, we repaid GBP 75 million of U.S. private placement notes as they matured, and we will repay a further GBP 84 million when they mature later this year. Following the successful issuance of the bond in February, the GBP 200 million of 2027 U.S. private placement notes were repaid early in March 2021. By the end of this year, we will therefore have no covenanted private placement notes outstanding. In addition to our good liquidity position, it is especially in times like this that we really benefit from our valuable freehold property estate. The most important decision on a property is location and the returns it can provide rather than the type of ownership. However, our freehold properties give us both tremendous operational and financial flexibility, including providing a strong covenant to our stakeholders and importantly, giving us options to support future financial funding for investments or to further protect our balance sheet. You can see on the right-hand side how the mix of our estate does move more towards leasehold due to the pipeline being 70%-80% leasehold in the U.K. and Germany, reflecting the current high freehold property prices in both markets. Our strong balance sheet with access to over GBP 2 billion of liquidity backed by our freehold property really sets us apart from our nearest competitors. As Alison mentioned in the introduction, we are investing to win. We know where to invest in this business and from previous experience, know that doing so at this part of the cycle gives us an advantage. In the year ahead, we will continue to grow our networks with around 2,000-3,000 new rooms in the U.K. and around 2,000 new rooms in Germany. The average cost per room in the U.K. and Germany shown here are roughly in line with the previous guidance that we gave in our capital markets day in February 2019. Our capital expenditure will start to move back towards pre-COVID levels this year at around GBP 350 million, with a split of around GBP 235 million in the U.K. as we open rooms and build back refurbishments and maintenance spend and around GBP 115 million across Germany as we continue to build our platform. Finally, turning to our guidance for the year ahead. This guidance, where comparisons are made, are all based off our year ending February 2020. As I'm sure you can appreciate, with the fast-changing nature of the COVID environment, we do not have much forward-looking visibility, and we will therefore not be giving sales or profit guidance. That said, we have worked through several scenarios to arrive at this year's guidance, and I'll briefly talk to the main points. In the U.K. as it stands, the sales to profit flow-through has improved from our previous guidance, largely due to the increased flexibility in our cost base. A 1% movement in total sales now leads to a GBP 16.5 million impact on profit versus the previous guidance of GBP 18 million. In addition, with our efficiency program, we will all but offset GBP 30 million of two years' worth of inflation. We will be getting on the front foot to build demand and will invest GBP 20 million in marketing and new channels to maintain our market share leadership. We will also benefit from the extension to the business rates holiday and the Job Retention Scheme by around GBP 80 million in the year. There's also the impact of the new sites that I spoke about on the previous slide. The German guidance on the top right is as laid out in our Q3 results in January, with additional disclosure on German support center costs. As a reminder, every 1% decline in RevPAR versus our pre-COVID expectation of around GBP 60 will result in a GBP 1 million reduction in profit. As a guide, group breakeven, EBITDA, is broadly achieved at an occupancy level of approximately 55% and a price rate that is around 6% down on FY 2020. This includes the one-off benefit of the Job Retention Scheme and Business Rates. Briefly touching on current trading. In the U.K., a reminder that we are focused on May to June, when hopefully the leisure sector starts to open up. We are seeing occupancy improving month-on-month, and we are continuing our outperformance versus the market. With only essential business travel allowed at the moment, occupancy is around about 33%. In Germany, the restrictions are particularly tight at the moment. With a slow vaccine rollout, restrictions were further tightened last week. This is reflected in the low occupancy level we are currently seeing across the whole of the hotel market of around 10%-15%. I will now hand over to Alison to build on how we will continue to capitalize on structural opportunities and our competitive advantages both in the U.K. and Germany. Thank you very much. Thanks, Nicholas. I'll now take you through the reasons why Whitbread is well-placed to be a sector winner and to drive long-term value for stakeholders. This slide sets out the reasons why we believe Whitbread is structurally and operationally advantaged, and why we are best placed to capitalize on the recovery opportunity in the U.K. and to achieve our goal of being the number one budget hotel operator in Germany. Enhanced structural opportunities will exist in both the U.K. and Germany. The budget hotel model is advantaged. We have broad customer reach, a very strong brand, best-in-class operations, a flexible property ownership structure, and direct digital distribution model. Nicholas has already covered our lean and agile cost base and our strong balance sheet, which provides strength and flexibility to continue investing. In the U.K., we believe these factors give us a uniquely advantaged position to extend our market leadership. In Germany, we believe the same success factors either already exist, or in the case of building the brand and direct distribution model, that there is a compelling opportunity for Premier Inn to develop those characteristics as the business grows in scale. The impact of COVID-19 will undoubtedly be material on our sector, but particularly so for the large independent sector and on new branded supply growth. The U.K. and German markets are characterized by long-term migration from independents to budget branded hotels and have been so for some time. Both markets are highly fragmented, with independents making up 48% of the U.K. market and 72% of the German market. In both the U.K. and Germany, we've seen the independents fall out of the market by around 1% per year. The downward pressure faced by both independents and other branded competitors will materially increase, both through demand weakness and increased cost pressure. Government support in the U.K. and Germany has undoubtedly helped some weaker operators survive so far. As these support schemes reduce, we expect investment and supply to contract. A process that will play out over the next 12-36 months in a timescale similar to that evidenced after the financial crisis between 2008 and 2012. Those operators who do survive will undoubtedly be capital constrained, adversely impacting their investment in room quality and leading to a weaker customer proposition. As we've already explained, we will capitalize on the expected contraction in competitor supply to grow our market share in the U.K. and accelerate our growth in Germany. Our balance sheet strength enables us to continue to expand, and as Nicholas Cadbury covered, we will add around 2,000-3,000 rooms in both the U.K. and Germany in each of the coming years. Supply additions that will almost certainly be unmatched by any other operator. We have a clear runway for growth in both markets. In the U.K., we have over 78,000 rooms with a line of sight to 110,000 rooms. In addition, we have the opportunity to optimize our large network in the U.K. by restructuring the portfolio within catchments and developing and rolling out new concepts such as hub by Premier Inn and Premier Plus rooms. In Germany, we will continue to grow our pipeline and believe we have line of sight to at least 60,000 rooms, which would equate to around 6% market share, which is still only around half of that achieved by Premier Inn in the U.K. This growth will be achieved through both organic and inorganic investment. Our approach to invest through the cycle will help drive good long-term return on capital, in line with the consistently high historic returns we delivered pre-COVID. This slide shows that the budget hotel segment in which we operate is higher growth than the rest of the hotel market, and is also more resilient in downturns as people seek value and quality. Budget branded hotels have outperformed the market in every year since 2008, including a material outperformance during and after the financial crisis. This next slide shows that we are again seeing a high level of outperformance as we go through the COVID crisis, with the mid-scale and economy market materially outperforming the rest of the market in every month since August. These two slides clearly show that Premier Inn is positioned in the best hotel sector, one that has consistently outperformed the rest of the hotel market, and we believe will continue to do so in the long term. Premier Inn's U.K. customer base is very broad and we're exposed to the areas that are and will recover the quickest. We over-index in the U.K. regions, which will recover faster than London, with over 80% of our rooms sold based in the regions. Similarly, we over-index in domestic demand with over 90% of guests based in the U.K., meaning we're not exposed to the slower recovery of international travel. We have an even split of business and leisure customers. Our leisure guests travel for a very wide range of reasons, and people's propensity to travel for domestic leisure, when allowed, remains high, as evidenced last summer and as anticipated this year. Our business customers are broadly split evenly between tradespeople and office workers. Trade demand has proven pretty resilient and is likely to be more immune from structural changes as these workers, by definition, need to be physically present to perform their jobs. Our office-based guests come from an incredibly broad range of sectors with no one sector dominating. We also significantly under-index on group bookings, and we don't provide meeting rooms or conference facilities, and are therefore less exposed to those areas of business travel that may see a structural shift to virtual meetings. As highlighted in my first section, Premier Inn is, by some margin, the strongest hotel brand in the U.K., a position that has continued to strengthen. The success of our customer proposition is based on a consistently high-quality customer offer across our entire estate. Our model provides customer choice by virtue of having the largest network, value for money, outstanding product quality, excellent customer service, and very high and consistent hygiene standards, meaning we can offer our customers great value, comfort and safety wherever they want to sleep. Such a strong brand underpins our market leading direct digital distribution levels, where only 1% of our rooms are sold through online travel agents. With the imminent return of leisure guests to our hotels in the U.K., we are moving to the next stage of our recovery. We are investing to win in both the U.K. and Germany, enabling us to significantly strengthen our positions in both markets. Our program of commercial initiatives is led by a major new above-the-line Premier Inn campaign branded Rest Easy, which was launched two weeks ago. The campaign features the voice of Lenny Henry, who is synonymous with the Premier Inn brand in the U.K. This is a multi-channel campaign across TV, radio, digital print and social media and will ensure that we are reinforcing Premier Inn brand consideration for both our leisure and business guests, particularly the small and medium-sized enterprises. The Rest Easy campaign is active across all channels, including digital, where we've broadened our reach and ensured that we are more visible across more search partners. Our direct distribution model means we own our customer relationships, enabling us to deliver more relevant, direct digital marketing. Customers can then book through our new website, which has a significantly improved user experience, which is driving higher conversion rates. We've also enhanced our business offer, broadening our addressable customer base and improving the customer booking journey. Improved credit management on our business accounts broadens availability for smaller companies, while our enhanced business booker portal is driving higher conversion rates. We've increased the number of travel management companies through which we sell our rooms. Importantly, this is giving us access to new customers who previously wouldn't have been permitted by their employers to book outside their designated travel management company. As both trade and office-based business demand begins to recover, this will significantly enhance our reach to business customers. We've taken significant steps to reassure our guests throughout the crisis. Using the learnings from the 39 hotels we kept open for key workers during the first lockdown, we implemented robust new hygiene standards, including social distancing protocols and enhanced cleaning standards. These were branded as CleanProtect in our hotels and a generous serving of safety in our restaurants. We introduced new flexible rate classes that give customers far greater flexibility to cancel or amend bookings, which has helped drive higher conversion rates by allowing customers to book with confidence. Customer feedback on our refunds policy and on our health and safety measures has been very positive and is one of the many factors that's driving our very high brand scores. We're continuing to invest in our product and room refurbishments, ensuring that our hotel estate remains well invested. We've also recommenced the rollout of Premier Plus rooms, targeting 2,000 rooms by the end of this financial year. These Premier Plus rooms drive higher occupancy rates and price. We're also focusing on delivering a strong customer offer in our restaurants, focusing on high-quality meals at good prices with a strong drinks offer. We currently have 114 restaurants open, primarily serving guests outdoors, and we are ready to reopen the full estate on the 17th of May. Moving on to Germany. Premier Inn's aim is to be the number one budget hotel operator in Germany by leveraging the strengths and capabilities of the U.K. business. The German market is very attractive, larger than the U.K., with higher levels of domestic business and leisure travel. Our strategy is clear: to replicate our U.K. success and become the number one budget hotel operator, and we're already making very good progress. We've grown our hotel estate significantly from six hotels at the start of the year to a current estate of 30 hotels, with 42 hotels in the pipeline, taking our total and committed pipeline to 72 hotels. These hotels come from both organic growth and from the acquisition of 19 hotels from the Foremost Group and 13 hotels from the Centro Group. As you can see from the map on the slide, this network now gives us a solid national footprint with a presence in many major German cities, meaning that our brand will be seen throughout the country. Having scale and national reach is important, and as our estate continues to grow, we can turn our focus to brand building with nationwide marketing campaigns and new corporate relationships supplementing effective local brand campaigns. To date, we've invested almost GBP 500 million of capital, and we've committed to a further GBP 376 million to build out our pipeline. In the long term, we believe the opportunity still exists to deliver returns of between 10% and 14%. In the short term, market conditions in Germany remain challenging, with extended lockdowns meaning the market recovery path is likely to lag behind the U.K. by several months. However, when the market does start to reopen, the budget sector is likely to recover fastest, and our enlarged estate gives us a strong platform from which to grow our market share. Our customer proposition continues to drive very high customer scores, and we believe sets us apart from our competitor set. As we move into the reopening phase, we'll leverage our capabilities and commercial initiatives from the U.K. to help build Premier Inn's brand recognition, including improving our visibility through digital search and harnessing business demand. Overall, we believe all of the factors that underpin our competitive advantage and long-term success in the U.K. either already exist or we are on a clear path to replicating them in Germany, providing a significant opportunity for us to drive long-term value. Our sustainability strategy is underpinned by our well-established Force for Good program, reflecting our ambitious commitments to operate responsibly and sustainably. The three elements of our Force for Good program, opportunity, community, and responsibility, help us do business in the right way and support our teams, the environment, our communities, our suppliers, and our guests. As you can see from the slide, the Force for Good program covers a wide range of areas, from championing inclusivity and diversity, to delivering challenging environmental targets, through to ensuring the integrity of our supply chain, to name but three. Despite the challenges this year, we did not stand still on our targets and objectives, and in fact, we took the opportunity to stretch some of them and reinforce others. In 2018, Whitbread set their first science-based target to reduce carbon emissions intensity, and we've been targeting reductions of 50% by 2025 and 100% by 2050. We've already achieved a reduction in emissions of almost 40%, and so we're well on our way to meet the first target of 50% reduction by 2025. This year, we wanted to go one step further and have since updated our carbon target to aim for net zero carbon emissions by 2040, a full decade faster. We believe that this will be industry-leading. We know this is a huge task. It's one that's vitally important for our business and for the battle against global climate change. This year, we also launched the GeniePoint network of high-powered electric vehicle chargers in our hotels across the country. Launching at almost 300 sites over the next three years, this will help us further reduce our environmental impact. We also took this year to focus on driving forward our target to cut food waste, to eliminate unnecessary single-use plastics, and to send no waste to landfill sites. We've had some great achievements this year despite the hardships and challenges of COVID-19. We remain the number one hospitality apprenticeship provider and have been awarded top employer status for 11 years running. Diversity and inclusion is another key area of focus, and we'll be publishing our eight commitments to drive meaningful progress in this year's annual report and accounts. Over the year, we donated 500,000 meals to charity partners, and 100% of our direct suppliers were given a sustainability risk assessment. We were proud to publish our first ESG report this year, and our green bond issuance in February is testament to the industry-leading work we're already doing to be a more sustainable business, and a demonstration of how our sustainability strategy is integrated across our wider business functions. We believe that our long-term strategy is highly compelling. We see a significant opportunity for our business to leverage the competitive advantages of our ownership model, strong brand, direct distribution, and broad customer reach. We already have clear evidence of this in our strong performance versus the market so far. In Germany, the acceleration of our estate growth means we have created a platform to take market share, to replicate our U.K. success, and to achieve our ambition to become the number one budget hotel operator in the market. We'll be operating in a weaker sector with a more constrained competitor set in both the U.K. and Germany, and we're already seeing early signs of this. Over the coming months and years, we expect to see a slowdown in room growth, less ability for competitors to invest in their room quality, and the acceleration of the structural decline of the independent sector. Our strong financial position gives Whitbread the confidence to invest, to take advantage of the enhanced structural opportunities that will undoubtedly exist in both the U.K. and Germany. All the while, continuing to ensure that our estate is optimized and delivering a market-leading guest experience. We'll continue to invest in a disciplined way, which will deliver strong returns and drive long-term sustainable value for all our stakeholders. Thank you all for listening today. There'll now be a short break before we start our live question and answer session at 9:15 AM, when Nicholas and I will look forward to answering your questions. Details of how to join us for the Q&A session can be found on our website.