EasyHotel says trading above expectations
EasyHotel said on Friday that trading in the five months to 28 February was slightly above the board's expectations, with owned hotels "materially" outperforming their competitive set during the period.
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In the UK, the overall hotel market improved year on year, mainly driven by strong owned hotel like-for-like revenue growth of 19% compared with the same period last year, as the group continues to benefit from the revenue strategy announced in December 2015.
Three "new look" hotels were opened during the period, in Brussels, Amsterdam Arena and Birmingham and the company said all of them have traded "exceptionally strongly" and should reach maturity ahead of budget.
EasyHotel said new projects under construction in Barcelona and Ipswich are progressing well and it continues to evaluate further acquisitions.
The company said the roll out of the new booking engine (Hetras) and yield management system (Duetto) are on schedule and will support its positive trading momentum.
Chief executive Guy Parsons said: "We remain on track to open eight new hotels, four owned and four franchised, in the current year. We are actively evaluating a number of interesting opportunities which potentially meet our site criteria of location and returns.
"The board remains confident that it shall secure properties in major and regional UK cities as well as key European gateway cities whilst leveraging the strong brand to increase easyHotel's presence in the growing branded super budget hotel segment."
At 0842 GMT, the shares were up 2.6% to 88.25p.