EasyHotel
 | |
| Industry | Hotels |
|---|---|
| Founded | 19 January 2004 |
| Founder | Stelios Haji-Ioannou |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom, Paris, and the Hague. |
Number of locations | 42[1] |
Area served | Europe[1] |
Key people | Karim Malak (CEO)[2] |
| Website | www |
EasyHotel (styled as easyHotel) is a part of the easy family of brands, and is a low-carben, great value hotel chain, with support offices in London, Paris, and the Hague with 40 branches in eleven European countries.[1]
History[edit]
 | This section needs additional citations for verification. (December 2023) |
Originally founded by Stelios Haji-Ioannou through the easyGroup, easyHotel was incorporated in 2004[3] and opened its first hotel in South Kensington, London in 2005. Whilst easyHotel owned its first hotel in South Kensington (which was subsequently sold and franchised in 2007), its growth strategy in its early years was to expand via franchise contracts. Stelios stayed in the first branded easyHotel property on its opening night on 1 August 2005. The first week the South Kensington property was open, it was fully booked.[citation needed]
In 2007, easyHotel also signed a master franchise agreement with Germany-based i.gen Hotels, planning 60 franchised easyHotels in Europe (outside the UK) in three years, of which about 10 were expected in Germany.[4][5]
In 2010, the brand opened its first hotel in Germany, the twelfth easyHotel overall. [5] After the success of their Berlin property, another easyHotel opened in the city centre of Frankfurt in 2015.
In June 2014, the Company floated on the London Stock Exchange raising £24.5 million to fund further growth and expansion. In August 2019, directors of the company backed a £139 million bid for the company despite opposition from founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou. The bidding consortium was made up of Luxembourg-based ICAMAP and Ivanhoé Cambridge of Canada. Ivanhoe is owned by Quebec’s pension company, CDPQ (Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec).[4] As of 2021, ICAMAP and Ivanhoé Cambridge now own the majority of shares in the company.[3] The majority owners also announced to invest € 50 million to vastly expand the chains operations by 2026 throughout Europe and the UK.[3]
In December 2021, Karim Malak was appointed CEO after the sudden death of François Bachetta at the age of 56 in June of the same year. In October 2022, easyHotel acquired eight franchised easyHotel properties in the BENELUX region (7 in The Netherlands (Amsterdam, Zaandam, Maastricht, Rotterdam, The Hague) and 1 in Brussels, Belgium) from Crossroads Real Estate for € 145 million.[citation needed] As of May 2024, easyHotel has 26 owned and leases easyHotel properties and 16 franchised easyHotel properties, with a fourth franchise in Zurich, and an owned and leased property in Marseille due to open later in 2024.[citation needed]
Growth in Europe[edit]
As of May 2024, easyHotel maintains overall 42 corporately owned and franchised branches in the United Kingdom (19, of which 5 are in London), the Netherlands (7), Switzerland (4), Germany (1), France (3), Spain (3), Belgium (1), Ireland (1), Hungary (1), Portugal (1) and Bulgaria. It is an exciting time of growth for the company, with many hotels in the pipeline and the potential to grow to 120 European hotels over the next four years.
- They have identified 120 locations in Western Europe alone where an easyHotel could be developed, to add to the 42 hotels they have now.
- They have been proposed 500+ opportunities in 2023.
- They are predicted to see major growth in Spain over the next couple of years, with a new signing announced in Alicante in April 2024, and hotels in Barcelona Meridiana and Valencia already in development.
Sustainability[edit]
- In April 2023, easyHotel announced a £4.5 million investment for 12 UK locations to further reduce the group’s carbon footprint as part of its strategy to be the leader in low-carbon, great-value hotels across Europe.
- The investment was spent on improving hotel energy efficiency with the installation of heat pumps, improved metering, control systems and new more efficient air conditioning systems.
- An additional €1.5 million investment was made for low-carbon improvements for easyHotel’s owned EU locations in February 2024.
- 2023 also saw the launch of easyHotel’s new low-carbon room:
- First launched with opening at easyHotel Paris Nord Aubervilliers. It was built in two rooms as a trial and is now being rolled out across more hotels over time.
- They use fewer raw materials, with Cradle-to-Cradle certified bedroom flooring, sustainably sourced timber bed frames, skirting, and door frames. Even the room stools are made from 100% recycled plastic.
- These rooms emit 21% less carbon on a 50-year lifecycle than the competition.
- In March 2024, easyHotel announced their work as part of the team that have developed BBCA’s new low-carbon label, made exclusively for hotels across France.
- The BBCA low-carbon label for new construction, renovation, and operation is a measure of the hotel's carbon footprint throughout its life cycle and a performance label to highlight exemplary buildings.
- Sixty different hotel projects (between 1,000 and 40,000 m2 - Haussmann-style / before 2000 / after 2010) were studied to identify the specific characteristics of a hotel's carbon emissions, the best practices to be developed to reduce them, and to determine the low-carbon requirement for obtaining the BBCA label and highlighting exemplary low-carbon hotels. easyHotel were a part of this 60.
- April 2024 marked the official rollout of easyHotel’s new Single Use Plastic policy:
- Removed single use plastic from all guest areas of the hotel
- Switched to sustainably sourced wooden key cards in place of plastic
- Replaced all the plastic bottles in our vending machines with cans
- Installed free water fountains so guests can refill their own bottles or buy a reusable bottle from reception.
- Removed single use plastic bin bags from bins in rooms
- Removed tea and coffee facilities and the associated single use plastic that comes with it. If guests want a hot drink, vending machines offers more sustainable hot drinks.
- Toiletry dispensers put in bathrooms in place of single use miniature toiletries.
References[edit]
- ^ a b c easyhotel.com - Our hotels retrieved 21 April 2024
- ^ thecaterer.com - Minute on the clock: Karim Malak, CEO of easyHotel 13 September 2022
- ^ a b c thecaterer.com - EasyHotel secures €50m to more than triple estate by 2026 13 December 2022
- ^ a b Travel Business Analyst, November 2019
- ^ a b welt.de (German) 7 January 2010
External links[edit]
Media related to EasyHotel at Wikimedia Commons
