Karim Malak is feeling content.
EasyHotel’s CEO said the brand company has moved forward significantly in the five years since the pandemic, repositioning its product in terms of higher quality, more direct bookings, customer diversity and more focused operations. Malak took the CEO role in December 2021.
In conversation with CoStar News Hotels on June 5, the same day London-based Tristan Capital Partners completed its acquisition of 100% of the shares of EasyHotel, Malak said EasyHotel is in a very good position to continue its expansion across Europe and grow market share.
The deal was announced on May 1, for an estimated equity value of approximately €242 million ($277.7 million).
“This is a good step on our hotel journey," Malak said. Tristan Capital’s "job is to deploy capital intelligently, and it is a good proposition. They are not just buying hotels but a platform to grow and an excellent brand, underpinned with a management team.”
Malak said that under its new owners, EasyHotel will shift its strategy and investment thesis. There will be more focus on refurbishments, acquisitions and conversions.
“There was less of an appetite for that with the former owners as they were at the end of their investment cycle,” Malak said.
Another new EasyHotel plan is to intensify country coverage and leverage, and strengthen position and market share in the market. Growing scale is such markets as France, The Netherlands, Portugal and Spain is on the agenda, he added.
The exit of the previous majority shareholders, real-estate investment firm ICAMAP and Ivanhoé Cambridge, a subsidiary of Canadian investor Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec, marks a new focus for EasyHotel in other ways, Malak said.
“Their investment thesis was to transform EasyHotel from a smallish, asset-light, United Kingdom-based firm into more of an owner-operator with wings, legs, call it what you will, all over Europe,” he said. “That is what we have done over the last three years, to transform the company. We were more than two-thirds in the U.K., and now we are more than two-thirds outside of it.”
A priority for Tristan Capital is for EasyHotel to concentrate on developing hotels in Europe’s gateway cities, Malak said.
“There is so much potential, with budget hotels doing so well, and we are gaining market share. Added to that EasyHotel benefits from intrinsic brand awareness,” Malak said. “We own a great model, in which our customer-, financial- and operations-centric components all talk to one another, are all linked. Now it is a question of further implementing that model and finding locations.”
The 2025 deal also sees the exit of EasyHotel and budget airline EasyJet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou, who had held on to 17.38% of the hotel firm.
Having founded the hotel part of his Easy empire in 2004, Haji-Ioannou via his family office took EasyHotel public in 2014 but private again in 2019 with ICAMAP and Ivanhoé.
The exit of such a high-profile investor is an indication of the company’s health, Malak said.
The deal also is notable for Tristan Capital, which now has more than €1 billion of hotel assets.
Blossoming budget
Malak said another plus is the expanding nature of EasyHotel’s customer. The brand now sees more business and international travel.
“Aligning communication, defining product, increasing direct sales … we had a very clear road map in the last three years,” he said.
By the end of the 2010s, EasyHotel had ended its model of customers buying a room night and then electing, if wished, to pay extra for add-ons such as toweling and use of the TV.
“That is not where the market is. No longer does that define our value segment. Our insight comes from knowing our guests spend six-and-a-half, seven hours asleep and want an excellent bed,” he said, adding his guests wanted to go for a swim, every time they would choose a city pool or the sea, rather than a minuscule hotel one.
Malak added that even if some of his guests have disposable income for travel, they often choose not to squander it.
“It is the same for EasyJet. It is not cheap, but its fares are lower than those of legacy carriers. We are the same, so let’s be as intelligently lean as possible and then pass on those savings to our customers,” he said.
Malak said EasyHotel’s choice of destination is not 100% aligned with that of EasyJet’s airport destinations.
“We prefer a nice mix of leisure and business. We’re two-thirds leisure, half international, half domestic, and with a mix of ages,” he said.
Malak added the increase in business and international guests is not a surprise given the better quality and international expansion of the firm.
“I am very proud of the [EasyHotel] team over the last three years. The platform now is stronger, more resilient than it was three years ago. We are now a very attractive proposition for franchises,” he said, adding his development team is not full and complete.
“We have a very clear vision of what we want the product to be,” he said, adding the brand had interest from a number of suitors, not just the eventual buyer.
The challenge now is to make sure the new strategy and processes do not take up too much energy, energy better spent on serving customers, increasing market share and sourcing hotels, Malak said. One route to that is to continue to increase direct bookings.
In recent years, EasyHotel has rebuilt its website to make sure it had the fastest and fewest steps in the industry, something Malak said has been achieved.
“We analyzed all the big guys’ [websites]. We’re quite proud of that as it obviously has financial considerations and more and faster conversions. We’ve changed the [property management system], channel management. We’ve changed everything, culminating in our new app that went live in March. From our customer reactions, it’s been a great success,” he said.
Easy Europe
EasyHotel recently opened the 111-room EasyHotel Marseille Euromed, which Malak said is indicative of where the hotel firm is going.
“I like Marseille, and the hotel, which has an excellent location, optimizes our product’s quality and design. It is a good showcase as to what we will do,” he said.
Also in EasyHotel pipeline are hotels in Alicante, Barcelona, Geneva and Valencia.
In 2024, EasyHotel grew full-year revenue 4% to £91.2 million ($124 million), which the firm said is a record high for the company.
Malak added there is sufficient cash reserves in the business.
“That is always good. Our profits before tax have improved significantly, and almost everywhere we are gaining market share. We are transitioning our model into larger hotels, and what also is significant is that we now own more of the real estate,” he said.
Accompanying the earnings’ report was the news that EasyHotel had secured £80 million ($91.5 million) in refinancing and new debt.