AccorHotels is continuing its strategy of optimizing its real estate assets and revitalizing its brands by giving fresh impetus to hotelF1 in France. The project is based both on an ambitious plan to relaunch the brand and on the dynamic management of its portfolio of hotels.
The Group is announcing the sale, to SNI Group (Société Nationale Immobilière – Caisse des dépôts et consignations Group), of a portfolio of 62 hotels made up of 7 fully-owned hotels and 55 hotels leased from the company Silverstone. This operation is subject to consultation with employee representative groups.
Following this transaction, AccorHotels plans to become the majority shareholder of the structure holding the remaining 102 hotelF1 assets. This transaction would be carried out via a share capital increase of €51 million.
This asset restructuring will finance a relaunch plan for the brand, including a refurbishment program spread over three years.
Sophie Etchandy-Stabile, Chief Executive Officer of HotelServices France & Switzerland said: “When it was created in 1985, hotelF1 was a pioneering concept in the budget segment. For the past 30 years, the brand has successfully built a strong reputation based on its accommodation concept. Today, we seek to capitalize on this reputation to launch a large-scale plan. The purpose of our plan is to rethink our accommodation service while retaining hotelF1’s original DNA, in order to offer a wider customer base a low cost and designer experience consistent with new patterns of traveling”. With its new brand signature “on the road”, hotelF1 will in the future be redesigned as a genuine destination where those on the move can socialize and have fun, combining a multitude of clever, and still low cost, accommodation solutions, with locations on main highways and on the outskirts of cities.
This new offer will be based on flexibility: shared rooms sleeping up to six with per bed pricing, DUO, TRIO and premium rooms, the latter fitted with a bathroom. Completely redesigned, the interior communal areas will offer a warm and colorful ambiance, ideal for eating, working, reading, having fun and socializing.
This concept, developed by the designer Carlos Pujol, in close collaboration with the hotelF1 teams, will incorporate the latest trends in traveling. hotelF1 “on the road” will therefore appeal to a wider customer base covering both leisure and business, and encompassing both weekdays and weekends, thanks to a product that is equally well suited to the needs of students, business travelers, backpackers and families.
