EICC gets green light for ‘pioneering’ hotel and hotel school development

The Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) has been given the go-ahead for a hotel and hotel school development in the capital.M&G Real Estate is funding the £350 million Haymarket Edinburgh development which will be developed by QMile Group. Work has started on site and the completed hotel will be operated by EICC under a franchise agreement with Hyatt Hotels Corporation.The 362-bedroom, 4-star hotel will address conference demand issues for the EICC – which has hosted almost 1.5 million delegates at the conference centre venue since opening in 1995 – while the hotel school will address recruitment challenges faced by the hospitality industry in Scotland. Together, the hotel and hotel school are expected to provide significant job creation and economic benefit for the city. The EICC commissioned hotel consultancy Colliers International to examine a series of 4-star options. The Colliers report indicated that future demand for hotel accommodation in the Edinburgh market, which already has the highest occupancy rates in the UK outside London, remains very positive despite economic uncertainty stemming from Brexit.The hotel will occupy one of the most accessible locations in Edinburgh, on a site well positioned for access to road, rail and air routes; business locations and visitor attractions; and the EICC. The hotel would benefit from a significant number of rooms being channelled to it via the EICC, and the availability of a 365-bedroom hotel under the control of the EICC will reduce the amount of business that has been historically lost because conference organisers cannot secure a sufficient number of rooms for their delegates.As an integral part of the hotel development is a hotel school and training academy that will offer a career path for students and trainees while providing a pipeline of qualified people for Scotland’s leisure and tourism industry. The hotel school will build close relationships with organisations including the Scottish Tourism Alliance, Edinburgh Hotels Association, British Hospitality Association, VisitScotland, Scottish Enterprise and Skills Development Scotland to ensure that the training offered matches the needs and recruitment challenges of the industry.The hotel school would operate a number of programmes at different academic levels, with the EICC envisaging that through interacting with different academic institutions it could run courses from NVQ level through to undergraduate and postgraduate degree curriculums. The EICC believes that by incorporating the hotel school into the hotel it will be creating an almost unique scenario within the United Kingdom whereby students would be working in a “live” operating environment.The EICC is set to announce annual results for 2019, a year in which the venue posted a record number of events and delegates, strong revenue growth and economic impact in the region of £55m. Later this year the EICC will mark its 25th anniversary.