easyHotel now has a second franchisee in London.

The existing 40+ room TownHouse Hotel, located on the Earl's Court junction of the Cromwell Road will be converted into a 70+ room easyHotel with work commencing immediately. With an exact address of 44-48 West Cromwell Road this property will be known as easyHotel Earls Court and will be the most high profile of the easyHotel properties as it sits on the main road leading into London from the M4 and Heathrow Airport.

This hotel will be operated by Queensway Hospitality a professional hotelier who are Holiday Inn franchisees as well as operators of independent hotels.

Last week it was announced that The Splendid Hotel Group would be opening the easyHotel Victoria in Belgrave Road SW1. Including the easyHotel Kensington in Lexham Gardens W8, which is currently owned and operated by the easyGroup, there will be 3 easyHotels in London by the end of 2006.

The first franchised easyHotel opened in Basel, Switzerland in September 2005, a month after easyHotel Kensington. In addition, it was recently announced that Istithmar, a Dubai based investment house, had signed a master franchise agreement to open 38 hotels across 16 countries in India, the Middle East and North Africa in the next five years.

In less than a year since launch, easyHotel has proved most successful, operating with very high occupancy rates. As a result the company has proved very attractive to franchisees and will shortly be recruiting a CEO to take over the day to day running of the business from Stelios.

easyHotel provides a safe, clean, private en-suite room for the night at the best possible price. The concept is designed for urban centres where property prices are high. easyHotel manages to fit more of their custom designed, modular rooms into an available space than can currently be managed by a competitor.

In other words, consumers are offered less space for a better price and easyHotel generally costs about half the price of another branded budget hotel in an urban centre. The current easyHotel in London in Lexham Gardens W8, which is owned and operated by the easyGroup, has en-suite rooms which start at £30 a night. These rooms are between 60 and 80 square feet in size and all are air conditioned. Some of the rooms have windows and these rooms tend to sell at a £10 premium over the windowless rooms.

"easyHotel is about a brand," said Stelios the serial entrepreneur and easyGroup chairman. "People who are paying out of their own pocket immediately understand that easyHotel has a great value product for them. With experienced and good quality hotel franchisees the easyHotel brand will continue to meet the demands of budget travel which is growing all over the world."

All future growth of easyHotel both inside and outside the UK will come through franchising and any potential franchisees can find more information at www.easyHotel.com