April 08–EasyHotel, the budget hotel chain owned by Greek Cypriot shipping and airline tycoon Stelios Haji-Ioannou, is expanding its empire to the unlikely location of Croydon.
The South London suburb where model Kate Moss was born will shortly be home to its 21st hotel as the group embarks on its expansion plans.
It is has just appointed former TUI group executive Darren Mee chief financial officer and recently added 72 bedrooms to the existing 90 at its Old Street hotel in Central London
As well as its three wholly owned sites in Croydon, Old Street and Glasgow, the chain has 18 franchised hotels ? about half in the UK and half abroad, in cities as far apart as Dubai, Berlin and Johannesburg.
Its latest accounts for the year to September 30, 2013 show sales of pounds sterling 15.2 million, of which pounds sterling 12.6 million was paid to its franchisees.
After costs and expenses, are deducted, easyHotel made pounds sterling 1.4 million profit on its pounds sterling 2.6 million turnover, up from an equivalent profit of pounds sterling 379,000 the year before. It did not pay a dividend.
A spokesman for parent company easyGroup said that the new hotel in Croydon would occupy the top four floors of the nine-storey former office block, while on the ground floor the firm was trying out ideas and layouts for its new budget supermarket concept easyFoodstore.
Chief executive Simon Champion, who joined last year from Deutsche Bank, said: ‘We’re opening hotels in Prague and Frankfurt later this year and we’re on the lookout for more sites.
‘We’re a very international brand, with half of our customers coming from Europe, and we concentrate on providing consistent quality at the budget end of the market.’
