EasyHotel invests £4.5m in reducing carbon emissions

Budget brand EasyHotel has announced a £4.5m investment into 12 of its UK sites to 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 energy efficiency at the hotels through the installation of heat pumps, solar panels, improved metering, control systems and more efficient air conditioning systems. The improvements are expected to reduce the group’s CO2 emissions by 45% by 2025.

The hotels benefiting from the investment will be: London Shoreditch, Croydon, Birmingham Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Milton Keynes, Ipswich, Cardiff, Newcastle and Glasgow. The hotels will remain open while the work is completed. By the end of the year, the business is set to announce similar investments for its hotels in other European countries.

Meanwhile, single use plastic bottles have been removed from all owned and leased UK hotels with free filtered water fountains installed for guests to refill their own bottles or buy a reusable bottle from reception.

Plastic key cards are also being replaced with wooden key cards, currently being rolled out across the owned and leased network. The wooden cards have been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as coming from sustainably managed forests.

Karim Malak, chief executive of EasyHotel, said: “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.”

EasyHotel has also partnered with Kanso, a “carbon neutral facilities management company”, for cleaning services across its owned and leased UK hotels. Initiatives such as removing plastic bin liners from rooms and using refillable recycled bottles have led to a 42% decrease in EasyHotel’s plastic waste associated with hotel cleaning since September 2022.

EasyHotel was founded in 2004 by EasyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji loannou and is now 79.1% owned by ICAMAP Investments S.à r.l and Ivanhoé Cambridge. The company has 44 hotels (more than 4,400 rooms) in 11 countries, comprising 18 franchised hotels and 26 owned and leased hotels, with properties located in city centres or near major transport links.