first easyHotel to open in Africa (6538A)

TIDMLONR

RNS Number : 6538A

Lonrho PLC

03 April 2012

3 April 2012

Lonrho Plc

("Lonrho" or the "Company")

Lonrho announces first easyHotel in Africa to open in Johannesburg

Lonrho Plc is delighted to announce that, under its exclusive franchise agreement with Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou's easyGroup, the first easyHotel.com branded hotel is scheduled to open by the end of the year at the historic former Stuttafords Department Store building in the Johannesburg Central Business District ("CBD") in South Africa.

The easyHotel.com Rissik Street is the first hotel under the exclusive 20 year master franchise agreement ("MFA") that Lonrho enjoys with easyHotel. Together, easyHotel and Lonrho are committed to establishing an easyHotel network across Africa. The MFA provides Lonrho with the exclusive rights to the easyHotel brand in Africa and sets out an agreed opening schedule for fifty properties by 2016. Opening its first easyHotel.com at the heart of the Johannesburg, the commercial capital of South Africa, demonstrates Lonrho Budget Hotels' corporate objective of operating hotels in Africa's high demand, high growth destinations.

easyHotel will be the first trans-continental hotel brand in Africa specifically designed to be accessible to many, not a select few. easyHotel's unique low-cost business model permits the customer to enjoy an international standard bedroom at a highly competitive price. The "easy" brand is one of the world's most recognised and successful value for money brands and easyHotel.com Rissik Street will be built and operated to easyGroup's exacting international standards, providing clean, safe and branded hotel accommodation for people travelling on business, leisure and visiting friends and family.

David Lenigas, Executive Chairman of Lonrho, commented:

"This new hotel project between Sir Stelios and Lonrho starts the roll-out of easyHotels.com throughout Africa. easyHotel.com Rissik Street (a Lonrho Hotel) will be the first of many hotels designed to give Africans and visitors to Africa a first world hotel experience at a budget price starting from as low as US$29 per room per night. There is a large gap in the market for a quality budget hotel and the easyHotel.com room offering is ideally suited to fill this much needed gap across the Continent.

"Lonrho is already a significant brand name across Africa. We believe that combining it with the "easy" brand, which is well-known for highly successful budget operations, to create the Lonrho easyHotel.com chain will satisfy the growing demand from consumers across the continent."

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Chairman of easyGroup, commented:

"easyHotel is all about simple comfort and great value . So I'm delighted to bring our first African hotel to Johannesburg. The city has a wealth of attractions and events of interest to both leisure and business visitors, and this new easyHotel will allow them to enjoy the best of what Johannesburg has to offer - without the expense. I'm confident that easyHotel fans will soon be putting South Africa on their destinations wish list.

"I'm looking forward to working closely with David Lenigas and his team as we begin bringing quality, value-for-money services to Africa."

- Ends-

 
 Enquiries: 
 Lonrho Plc            +44 (0) 20 7016 5105 
 David Lenigas 
 Geoffrey White 
 David Armstrong 
 
 easyGroup 
 Richard Shackleton    +44 (0) 20 8150 9061 
 
 Panmure Gordon        +44 (0) 20 7459 3600 
 Tim Linacre 
 Dominic Morley 
 Adam Pollock 
 Hannah Woodley 
 
 FTI Consulting 
 Edward Westropp       +44 (0) 20 7831 3113 
 Georgina Bonham

Notes to Editors:

About easyHotel

easyHotel is a well-established chain of budget hotels based in London with hotels spanning from as far north as Edinburgh and as far south as Dubai, focused on delivering high quality, international-standard bedrooms at an affordable price. Typical easyHotel customers seek a modern, comfortable bedroom for the night, placing a higher priority on exceptional value rather than the peripheral services that make traditional hotels more expensive.

easyHotel.com has a sophisticated booking system that allows customers to access discount room rates. Rates vary based on how early the booking and how much demand there is for a particular date. This pricing approach enables easyHotel.com to provide highly competitive accommodation rates starting as low as US$29 per night.

About the easyHotel.com Rissik Street site in Johannesburg CBD:

The City of Johannesburg's regenerated CBD is expanding rapidly and the unique prime location will catapult easyHotels.com to being amongst the leading internationally branded hotels in the City.

South Africa's luxury department store Stuttafords opened its first Johannesburg store on Rissik Street and Pritchard Street in 1893. The ten storeys tall building was one of the first skyscrapers in the Johannesburg CBD, ensuring that today the former Stuttaford's building remains a major landmark of Johannesburg. Situated at the corner of Rissik and Pritchard Streets and is across the road from a busy retail centre with retail stores such as Jet and Edgars and the Johannesburg High Court, this is one of the most high profile locations in the country and truly a great location from which to launch easyHotels.com into the South Africa market.

Lonrho has signed a 30 year lease with Afhco on the Stuttafords site. The Afhco Group, founded in 1996, is a leading investor, developer, and manager of affordable housing and commercial property in the Johannesburg CBD. Afhco currently owns 62 buildings in the Johannesburg inner city, representing approximately 3800 rental apartments and about 300,000m(2) of retail, commercial and light industrial space. They have a further 1000 residential units under development for 2012, bringing their total residential rental portfolio to near on 5000 units with a total portfolio value of approximately R1.6 billion.

This information is provided by RNS

The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

END

MSCSSUFIEFESELL

Lonrho (LSE:LONR)
Historical Stock Chart
From Jun 2024 to Jul 2024