Entrepreneur Stelios Haji-Ioannou has expanded his no frills empire with a venture into the hotel industry by opening an easyHotel in London.

The first easyHotel, where rooms cost from £20 a night, opened in central London on 1 August 2005

easyHotel is designed for city centres where the price of property is high. By getting more rooms into the same available space consumers are being asked to trade off space for a better price.

The new easyHotel in London is located just off the Cromwell Road between South Kensington and Earls Court. There are 34 double rooms, all with double mattresses and a quilt, en-suite bathrooms with towels, air conditioning and pay-as-you-go television at £5 per 24 hours.

There is one disabled room and three of the rooms have windows. The three rooms with windows sell at a premium to the 30 rooms without windows. The rooms come in three sizes - small, very small and tiny - or to be more precise, 80, 70 and 60 square feet respectively.

easyHotel has one member of staff permanently on site but no services other than accommodation and no common or public areas other than a manned reception desk. Food, beverage and entertainment can all be found in the immediate area of London around easyHotel.

The aim of easyHotel is to provide a safe, clean room for the night with a bathroom en-suite and to fill the gap left between the branded chains of hotels and bed & breakfast accommodation. The existing branded hotel chains all start at a price much higher than easyHotel and bed & breakfast accommodation is an un-branded 'one-off' service where quality and value are variable.

The easyHotel in London is owned and operated by the easyGroup but future growth is happening through franchising. The first franchisee has already signed up and the first franchised easyHotel will open in Basel, Switzerland in September 2005. Further franchises should open in the future as the easyHotel product is designed to work in most major cities and towns around the world, including further expansion in London and in the UK.

The company said that since opening the www.easyHotel.com website for bookings in June 2005 sales have been very encouraging even with no advertising expenditure at all. Following the trend of most easyGroup companies, prices rise with demand so that the lowest prices have sold out for the periods of popular demand.