Hotels owned by easyHotel have continued to “significantly outperform” both their competitors and the wider UK hotel market over the winter.
Strong trading by the super budget chain last year has continued, with the performance since the financial year ending September 30, 2017, described as being in line with expectations.
Chief executive, Guy Parson said: “As previously highlighted, we continue to see a good number of attractive potential development opportunities to further accelerate the growth of our owned hotels. These are both larger and more numerous than we had originally anticipated.
“It is for this reason that we are currently considering our long-term financing options, including raising new debt and equity capital, to position the group to take advantage of these opportunities and underpin easyHotel’s long term objective to be the market leader in super budget sleep.”
The past three months saw the opening of an owned 78-room property in Liverpool and a 104-room hotel in Newcastle.
“Both hotels are trading in line with the strong performance of the hotels opened during the last financial year,” easyHotel said in a trading update this morning ahead of its annual meeting.
Franchised hotels have also continued to trade strongly, particularly in continental Europe, the company said.
A £1.5 million refurbishment of hotels in Croydon and Glasgow is underway to bring them into line with an updated brand look.
The company plans to retain and refurbish a 92-room hotel at Old Street, London. Planning permission is being sought to add an additional floor and increase the area of the building for use as office accommodation.
The group acquired a freehold site in central Cardiff in October for the development of a 120-room hotel due to open in 2019, subject to planning permission and last week announced plans for a 124-room hotel in Milton Keynes due to open in mid-2019.
Other new hotels projects under construction include Leeds (93 rooms), Sheffield (131 rooms), Ipswich (89 rooms) and Barcelona (204 rooms) which are all expected to open this year.
The group announced a further two franchised hotels with 162 rooms in November in The Hague and Maastricht, set to open in the second half of 2018.
Other new franchise hotels under construction include Lisbon (101 rooms), Bernkastel-Kues (100 room hotel), Belfast (81 rooms), Reading (54 rooms) and Bur Dubai (300 rooms) which are all planned to open in 2018.
The group also has hotels under development in Istanbul (300 rooms), Iran (500 rooms) and Sri Lanka (200 rooms).
Chief executive, Guy Parsons, said: “We have been pleased with the group’s performance to date in the new financial year, reflecting the growing strength of the easyHotel brand.
“The like-for-like revenue growth trends across both our owned and franchised estates in the prior financial year have continued.”
He added: “Whilst we are very mindful of the wider UK macro-economic uncertainty and the impact this continues have on consumer confidence, we are encouraged by the strong outperformance of our hotels, both in the UK and overseas.
“EasyHotel has a committed pipeline of 941 owned rooms under development which will make a significant contribution to system sales, revenue and adjusted EBITDA going forward.
“The latest addition of Milton Keynes to our committed pipeline completes the deployment of funds from our 2016 equity fundraising and bank loan.”