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Budget hotel chain Easyhotel has posted a first half loss of £120,000 attributed to the closure of its Old Street site and dampened consumer confidence due to Brexit uncertainty.
The company also said it experienced higher depreciation from its new hotels. Despite this total sales during the period increased 25.3% to £20.2m boosted by the three openings in Ipswich, Lisbon in Portugal, and Bernkastel-Kues in Germany, that were “trading in line with expectations”.
The three new hotels totalled 290 rooms and Easyhotel expects to open a further five hotels totalling 517 rooms during the second half of the year, with another nine new owned hotels (1,096 rooms) planned to open in the next 24 months.
Guy Parsons, CEO of EasyHotel, said: “EasyHotel has delivered a market outperformance and good profitable growth in the first half of the year against a challenging market. The tactical decisions taken early in the period to drive market share through our OTA strategy has underpinned this, and we have continued to benefit from the impact of our ambitious opening programme.
“Over the course of the last two years we have added a total of 18 hotels to our portfolio, significantly expanding our network in key business and tourist destinations across the UK and Europe. Our most recent openings have not only traded in line with our expectations but have also tracked the good performance seen from our new hotels opened in the prior year, which in the current trading environment is very encouraging.”
He added: “Our UK network of owned hotels is already well established, with a strong opening programme in place for the next two years. The group is now focused on replicating this success across Europe.
“The hotel market outlook remains uncertain, particularly in the UK where the ongoing Brexit negotiations continue to dampen consumer confidence. We are by no means immune, but the maturing profile of our hotels and our strong development pipeline will support continued growth and enhance our earnings profile. Combined with the careful control of our central costs, these efforts give the board confidence in meeting its expectations for the year ending 30 September 2019.”
