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.

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 is surging its expansion across Europe in the coming years, leveraging the leading easy brand awareness. The company aims to strengthen its presence in key markets such as France, Spain, Germany and the UK, whilst developing in new markets, including Italy, Greece and Poland.

Operating hotels:

easyHotel has an estate of 49 hotels with c.4,900 rooms, comprising 17 franchised hotels (c.1,200 rooms) and 32 owned and leased hotels (c.3,700 rooms)

Hotels:

United Kingdom: Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Ipswich, Leeds, Liverpool, London Croydon, London Paddington, London Shoreditch, London South Kensington, London Victoria, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Oxford, Reading & Sheffield.

France: Marseille, Nice, Paris Charles De Gaulle Villepinte & Paris Nord Aubervilliers.

BENELUX: Amsterdam Arena, Amsterdam City Centre, Amsterdam Zaandam, Brussels, Maastricht, Rotterdam, The Hague & The Hague Scheveningen.

Spain: Alicante, Barcelona Fira, Barcelona Meridiana, Madrid Centro Atocha, Madrid San Blas, Malaga & Valencia.

Switzerland: Basel, Zurich City Centre, Zurich Limmatplatz, Zurich Main Station & Zurich West.

Rest of Europe: Berlin, Budapest, Dublin, Lisbon & Sofia.