LONDON (Alliance News) - easyHotel PLC on Monday said trading for the year to end September 20 is in line with its expectations thanks to an improving hotel market, and said it has sold the ground floor of a property in Ipswich for GBP140,000.
The budget hotel operator said its in line performance applied to both its owned and franchised hotels, and said it also remains on track to deliver its development strategy first announced in September.
easyHotel said it was selling a part of the ground floor space at its Ipswich property, located at 3-5 Northgate Street, under a 999-year leasehold agreement, for the space to be converted into a coffee shop.
easyHotel had bought the freehold of the building in January 2016 for GBP800,000.
The group noted that its new hotel projects under construction, in Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester and Ipswich, were progressing well. Its Birmingham property will open later this week, Manchester will open in March and Ipswich during the summer.
Meanwhile in Spain, easyHotel said it received planning permission for its 204-room new-build Barcelona hotel, after completing its purchase of the land in November and securing a EUR8.3 million facility to part-fund the development of the project in January. This hotel is expected to open in 2018.
In the UK, its development pipeline was extended with long leasehold properties conditionally acquired in Sheffield and Leeds in December.
easyHotel said that, within its franchised hotel development pipeline, it has opened two hotels since the end of September, located in Brussels and Amsterdam, and a further two franchise hotel projects have been announced, in Belfast and Reading.
"The UK hotel market improved in November and December with revenue per available room growing in both months compared with 2015. Our owned hotels have continued to outperform the general market and their individual competitive set, as measured by [hotel benchmarking tool] STR Global," said easyHotel CEO Guy Parsons.
"A similar market improvement has been experienced across much of continental Europe and our franchise hotels are performing in line with their respective markets," Parsons added.
Shares in easyHotel were up 0.6% at 90.00 pence on Monday.
By Hannah Boland; hannahboland@alliancenews.com; @Hannaheboland
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