Eklo is currently setting up near Paris CDG airport. What other developments can you expect?
Emmanuel Petit - Following on from Eklo Roissy, this year we will be opening our tenth establishment in Paris. Montpellieropposite the TGV station. And we now aim to double in size over the next five years. To achieve this goal and continue our development, we are in the process of finalising a major fund-raising drive. We're looking to expand into new major cities targeting Nantes, Rennes, Strasbourg, Dijon and Marseille. At the same time, we want to strengthen our presence in cities where we are already established, such as Bordeaux, Lyon or Toulouse and of course in the Paris region, where there is a real market for quality budget hotels. For the moment, we have two hotels, at Roissy and Marne La Vallée, and two others in the pipeline for 2024, at Porte de Versailles and near Gare Montparnasse.
What type of accommodation will a business traveller find in Eklo hotels? How does your offer differ, for example, from the new-generation youth hostels that are springing up here and there?
Emmanuel Petit - Since 2017, and the opening of our hotel in Lille, we have decided to develop a hybrid offering, with a great mix of uses and rooms. Unlike new-generation youth hostels, our establishments offer few dormitories and many private roomsThe proportion is 80% of traditional rooms and 20% of atypical accommodation, including family rooms for four people and dormitories, which can be private or sold by the bed. Another difference with hostels, which have few private rooms but are more upmarket and sell for between €100 and €150 a night, is that we want to remain an economical solution, with aggressive rates.
In tune with the times, your hybrid concept also plays on the fundamentals of lifestyle hotels?
Emmanuel Petit - In fact, our concept is also organised around contemporary living spaces with a lively bar-restaurant in each of our establishments. We also aim tobe rooted in local life. In Bordeaux, in addition to the bar-restaurant, we offer a 500 m2 outside the hotel, which for six months of the year has a clientele of 80% from Bordeaux. It's really something we're looking to develop.
The Eklo concept is not only economical, it is also and above all ecological. A positioning that is not new.
Emmanuel Petit - We were even pioneers. When I developed my first hotels in 2014, I already wanted them to be eco-responsible, with wood construction, short supply chains and sourcing almost exclusively from local partners. From the outset, our buildings have been low-energy buildingsThese are usually connected to the district heating network, if possible with photovoltaic panels, and always with LED lighting and energy savers in the rooms. Another example is our hotel in Toulouse, which also has a system of active tiles that allow a water circuit to pass through the floors and ceilings to heat and cool the establishment. All of this in a low-carbon district undergoing rapid development, Les Halles de la Cartoucherie, where 80% of the buildings are made of wood.
Does low energy consumption mean low tariffs?
Emmanuel Petit - Having as small an energy footprint as possible is of course a step in the right direction. But keeping prices attractive is the result of an overall balance which we are actively working on. This includes reduced energy consumption, limited sales via OTAs and minimum lengths of stay at certain periods to avoid having to redo rooms every day. Eklo's philosophy is to keep our costs as low as possible in order to keep room rates attractive for our customers.
With openings at Paris CDG these days, and soon at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, business customers should be increasingly important to your group. How are you preparing for this?
Emmanuel Petit - These new openings have encouraged us to take a more active interest in our business customers. We therefore hired a specialist in 2022 to work on this target and integrate our hotels into corporate distribution channels.
As for the business travellers themselves, what can you offer them?
Emmanuel Petit - Alongside the lively areas, our hotels always offer quieter places where mobile professionals can sit down to work, organise a meeting or have a video conference, and stay as long as they like without having to consume anything. But our most recent establishments now have meeting roomsThe new hotel at Porte de Versailles will offer seminar rooms for groups of up to a hundred people. For its part, the future hotel being prepared at Porte de Versailles, a 300-room powerhouse, will offer seminar rooms that can accommodate groups of a few hundred people. The hotel, which will also have an attractive rooftop restaurant, will be an attractive venue for professionals visiting trade fairs and business travellers passing through Paris, as well as leisure guests, since the hotel will have around fifteen dormitories and thirty family rooms.
In both Toulouse and Lyon, your hotels are located in up-and-coming districts. Is this the angle of Eklo's development?
Emmanuel Petit - We're not necessarily targeting this type of area, but rather a fairly urban one. In Bordeaux, we're right in the heart of the city. In Montpellier, the hotel will be opposite Saint Roch station. What's more, we always look for locations close to public transport, to give priority to soft mobility. So even when the hotel is a little way from the city centre, as in Lyon, it can be reached in 15 minutes by tram from La Part-Dieu station.
Will the Eklo brand also grow internationally?
Emmanuel Petit - For the moment, our priority is France. We first want to establish our channel nationally, before considering expansion into neighbouring major cities, whether in Spain, Portugal, Italy or Belgium. These are targets that interest us, but they are not our short-term priority. We may start to take an interest in them in two or three years' time, before establishing a presence there by the end of the decade.
