UPDATE 1-Costa coffee owner Whitbread's profit rises on expansion drive

(Corrects to read 53.46 pounds, paragraph 4)

Oct (Shenzhen: 000069.SZ - news) 24 (Reuters) - Whitbread Plc (Frankfurt: WHF4.F - news) , Britain's biggest hotel and coffee shop operator, said first-half pretax profit rose 6.7 percent as it added more Premier Inn rooms and opened more Costa coffee outlets.

Underlying pretax profit in the six months to Aug. 31 was 328 million pounds ($433 million) while revenue rose 7.4 percent to 1.67 billion pounds, it said on Tuesday.

In Britain, it opened over 2,000 new Premier Inn rooms and added 21 more Costa stores during the first half.

At Premier Inn, UK revenue per available room (RevPAR) rose 1.8 percent to 53.46 pounds. The business was on track to have 85,000 rooms by 2020 from 70,120 rooms at the end of the half year, the company said.

Costa UK revenue rose 8.3 percent to 542 million pounds driven by good response to its breakfast and lunch ranges and addition of 108 net new stores.

($1 = 0.7571 pounds) (Reporting by Rahul B in Bengaluru; Editing by David Holmes and John Stonestreet)