Moto Hospitality
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Hospitality |
| Predecessor | Granada |
| Founded | 7 February 2001 (Toddington) |
| Headquarters | Toddington, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom |
|
Area served
|
United Kingdom except Northern Ireland |
|
Key people
|
Tim Moss (CEO) Robert Prynn (CFO) Brian Lotts (Chief Operating Officer) Sir Gerry Robinson (Chairman) |
| Owner | Private investors |
|
Number of employees
|
 6,000+ |
| Website | www |
Moto Hospitality is a company which operates 58 motorway service stations across the United Kingdom. It's currently the UKs biggest service area operator.
Moto is owned by USS whom bought it from Macquarie. Macquarie Bank managed Moto between when Compass Group sold off SSP in April 2006 for £1,822 million and late 2015. As they have new owners and to keep up with their rivals, Moto is currently refurbishing sites with new restaurants.
Granada, who owned the chain of Granada motorway service stations, merged with Compass in July 2000, to form Granada Compass plc. The plan was to combine the hospitality interests of the two businesses and hive off the media division, which was done by demerging the new group into Compass plc and Granada Media in 2001. Granada had previously acquired Forte plc in a £3.3bn hostile takeover on 24 January 1996. It sold its French Cote France service stations to Italy's Autogrill in December 1997. The food and hospitality division of Granada was retained by Compass, which became its Select Service Partner (SSP) UK division, but ownership of the Granada brand and trademark passed to the new media company. The Granada name was retained on the service stations until 23 May 2001, when the 47 sites were rebranded as Moto. In 2006, Moto separated from Compass Group and SSP following successful acquisition by a consortium of investors and underwent a period of intensive expansion through investment in new brands and offers.
Moto operates various franchise outlets at Extra MSA locations. These include M&S Simply Food, Costa Coffee and Greggs.
WHSmith stores are located at all Moto services.
Most Moto locations have hotels:
The Barber Shop at Toddington and Leigh Delamere has closed, leaving only one site at Lymm.
In 1995, Granada thought that betting arcades would be useful at motorway services:
Fone Bitz operate at selected Moto sites.
The petrol stations at Moto sites are variously Esso or BP.
...
Wikipedia