easyHotel, the affordable low-carbon hotel brand, has 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 first choice for low-carbon affordable hotels in Europe.
The investment will be spent on improving hotel energy efficiency with the installation of heat pumps, solar panels, improved metering, control systems and new more efficient air conditioning systems. Following the work, CO2 emissions are expected to fall by 45% by 2025 across all the 12 UK locations.
In addition to the upgrades, single use plastic bottles have been removed from all owned and leased hotels with free filtered water fountains installed for guests to refill their own bottles or buy a reusable bottle from reception. Going too are plastic key cards, with wooden key cards currently being rolled out across the owned and leased network. The wooden cards are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as coming from sustainably managed forests. It is expected that the wooden key cards will prevent 55,000 plastic key cards from being produced in 2023.
The hotel industry accounts for about one percent of carbon emissions globally, and we have a collective responsibility to do all we can to reduce these emissions. Our business is naturally low-carbon thanks to our size-efficient room design which uses less raw materials, but it’s important for us to look at every area of our operations and try where we can, to be as low-carbon as possible. Our no frills, easy, experience means we don’t provide unnecessary items that end up in landfill or waste power on often unused elements of a hotel such as gyms and restaurants. The energy that we do consume is set to become even more efficient due to this investment and we’re proud to be offering low-carbon alternatives which in turn, enables us to pass on savings to our guests too. Karim Malak, CEO of easyHotel
As part of easyHotel’s plan to be as low carbon as possible, the Group has also partnered with Kanso, a carbon-neutral facilities management company, for all cleaning across its owned and leased UK hotels. Initiatives such as removing plastic bin liners from rooms and using refillable recycled bottles has led to a 42% decrease in easyHotel’s plastic waste associated with hotel cleaning since September 2022.
The UK locations benefiting from the investment £4.5m investment are London Shoreditch, Croydon, Birmingham Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Milton Keynes, Ipswich, Cardiff, Newcastle and Glasgow. The hotels will remain open whilst the work is completed. By the end of the year, easyHotel is set to announce similar low-carbon investments for its hotels in Belgium, France, Netherlands and Spain.
About easyHotel
easyHotel is an affordable, low-carbon chain of value hotels. It was founded in 2004 by Sir Stelios Haji loannou and is now 79.1% owned by ICAMAP Investments S.à r.l and Ivanhoé Cambridge.
The company’s purpose is to offer affordable travel to all. It now has 45 establishments in 11 countries, with all hotels ideally located in city centres or near major transport links. Over the past few years, easyHotel has been working to achieve its ambitious growth objectives, with several developments in the pipeline in major city centres and a planned schedule of hotel openings.
ICAMAP Investments S.à r.l. is an investment fund managed by ICAMAP S.à r.l., an asset management company founded by Guillaume Poitrinal, Harm Meijer and Alexandre Aquien.
Ivanhoé Cambridge internationally develops and invests in high-quality real estate properties. It is a subsidiary of Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), a global investment group.
easyHotel has an estate in 44 locations with 4,400+ rooms, comprising 18 franchised hotels (c.1,400 rooms) and 26 owned and leased hotels (c.3,000 rooms)
easyHotel locations
United Kingdom: London Shoreditch, London Heathrow, London Paddington, London Victoria, London South Kensington, London Croydon, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Leeds, Sheffield, Ipswich, Milton Keynes, Cardiff, Oxford, Luton, Reading, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast.
Benelux: Amsterdam City Centre, Amsterdam Arena, Amsterdam Zaandam, The Hague, The Hague Scheveningen, Rotterdam, Maastricht, Brussels.
Europe: Berlin, Charles de Gaulle (Paris), Nice, Barcelona, Malaga, Madrid, Zurich City Centre, Zurich West, Zurich Central Station, Basel, Lisbon, Sofia, Budapest, Dublin, Paris Nord Aubervilliers.
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