EasyGroup has an agreement in place to sell the share capital of its EasyHotel brand to London-based Tristan Capital Partners' discretionary fund European Property Investors Special Opportunities 6.
EasyGroup Founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou announced the deal, which is subject to approval by shareholders.
An EasyGroup news release on this “recommended mandatory cash offer” stated approximately 189.5 million shares, or 81% of the entire share issue, was being transferred at an aggregate price of €196.13 million ($222 million).
The deal includes the 17.38% of EasyHotel that is owned by the Haji-Ioannou family office, thus placing an overall value of the entire EasyHotel firm at approximately €242 million.
The agreement keeps the EasyHotel brand in private hands. Founded in 2004, EasyHotel was publicly listed between 2014 and 2019, but for the last five to six years its majority share has been in the joint hands of ICAMAP and Ivanhoé Cambridge, the real estate division of CDPQ.
The news release from EasyHotel said: “EasyGroup will continue to provide the easyHotel.com brand to the [new owner] under license in return for a reasonable royalty.”
In August 2024, EasyHotel executives said they were “exploring various strategic options regarding the company, including the possible sale of the entire issued, and to be issued, share capital of the company.”
Tristan Capital has approximately €15 billion of assets across all real estate classes under management.
“Tristan’s funds have established a leading presence in the European budget hotel sector, with this transaction bringing the total committed hotel investments to in excess of €1 billion to date,” said Kristian Smyth, managing director of investments at Tristan Capital Partners. “The budget hotel sector forms a core part of Tristan’s European investment theses, reflecting the firm’s conviction in the long-term growth potential of this under-represented sector.”
EasyHotel has 44 hotels in Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, with a total of approximately 4,900 rooms. Of its open portfolio, EasyHotel has 16 franchised hotels with approximately 1,200 rooms and 28 owned-and-leased hotels with approximately 3,700 rooms.
In its development pipeline, EasyHotel has four hotels coming to Spain in 2025 and 2026 — properties in Alicante, Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia — that will complement existing hotels in Barcelona and Málaga. In October, the firm opened the 111-room EasyHotel Marseille Euromed, and the company has another hotel opening in France in 2027.
EasyHotel's expansion has benefitted from several loans. Its Spanish hotel openings have been backed by a £24.5 million ($32.6 million) loan from CaixaBank; a £42.5 million loan from Santander U.K. that targets “low-carbon, European expansion”; and a £6 million loan from BRED Banque, which helped open the Marseille hotel.
Karim Malak, CEO of EasyHotel, said Tristan’s “additional resources and sector expertise will support [EasyHotel’s] expansion at a time when we are seeing a record number of enquiries from potential partners eager to open.”
At press time, both Tristan Capital and EasyHotel had not responded to requests for comment.