No-frills accommodation chain easyHotel has outlined plans to invest in solar panels and other upgrades, in a move to slash CO2 emissions across a raft of its UK sites.
The hotel brand, which was founded in 2004 by entrepreneur Sir Stelios Haji loannou, will spend £4.5 million on improving hotel energy efficiency across 12 locations, including in Shoreditch and Croydon.
The projects will include the installation of heat pumps and new more efficient air conditioning systems for example. Following the work, CO2 emissions are expected to fall by 45% by 2025 across all those sites.
Investment comes at a time when companies are increasingly focusing on environmental, social, and governance.
The chain added that single use plastic bottles have been removed from all owned and leased 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 ones.
Karim Malak, chief executive of easyHotel, said: “The hotel industry accounts for about 1% 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.”easyHotel is majority owned by an investment fund managed by ICAMAP and developer Ivanhoé Cambridge, and Sir Stelios Haji loannou has a 19% stake in the business.
Further investments across more of the firm’s sites will follow. It has 45 hotels in 11 countries.
