Staycity to open in Covent Garden

The 106-apartment site will open in Covent Garden this December, with a range of studio apartments that can accommodate up to two people.

 It will be the group’s fourth site in London and the first to open under Staycity’s as yet unnamed new luxury brand, which was created for premium city centre locations.

Chief executive of Staycity Tom Walsh told BigHospitality the company engaged Heneghan Peng Architects to create a ‘four star deluxe interior’ for the new-style apartments.

“This isn’t going to be a similar design to our other serviced apartments in the UK,” Walsh explained.

“For quite some time we’ve been considering launching a four star deluxe brand that will compete with four star hotels. This will allow us to acquire sites in more central locations in European capital cities, London of course being the primary one.”

Further UK expansion​

Staycity has ambitious UK expansion plans and will open its Birmingham aparthotel​ in May 2015. It has also signed deals to open a second site in Manchester in 2016 and a third site in Edinburgh in 2017.

Walsh said Staycity aims to open between 2000 and 3000 units in the UK in total and is currently in negotiations for a further 10 sites.

“We don’t expect to get all 10 of those sites but we’d be very happy if we get half of them,” he added.

The group is looking for plots in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Bristol, Bath and Cardiff, as well as the UK capital.

“We’d love as many of our sites to be in London as possible and a lot of our efforts and focus is going there,” said Walsh. 

“We feel there is an undersupply of serviced apartments in London and in general in the UK. We find that everywhere we open our occupancy runs higher than the surrounding hotels.

“Serviced apartments and aparthotels are a bit more home-from-home and places offering things like kitchen facilities are in short supply here.”