Equity Point U.K. Ltd. (United Kingdom)

Sponsor: Equity Point Holding Empresarial, S.L.
Activity: Youth hostel
Industry: Hostelry
Product: Joint venture loan to the project company
Total investment: 1.25 million euros
Resources: FONPYME

After gaining experience in Barcelona in the late nineteen nineties, initially with accommodations for groups and subsequently for FITs (Free Independent Travellers), in 2007 Equity Point’s managers began to open youth hostels, their main line of business, outside Catalonia. The first stage in this process took the company to Madrid and from there to its first international venture, the management of a hostel in Marrakech, Morocco.

Having identified a business opportunity and further to this expansion process, the Equity Point management team decided to undertake an investment project in London, which has become the world’s leading tourist destination for young people, as well as an indispensable stop on many itineraries.

The project in the United Kingdom, which called for an investment of over one million euros, consisted of operating a 400-bed youth hostel located in a central and well-connected district in the capital city. The Compañía Española de Financiación del Desarrollo, COFIDES, granted a joint venture loan for over 500,000 euros to the Catalonian group’s subsidiary in the United Kingdom to finance this phase of its international development. The loan will be drawn from the Fund for SME Foreign Investment Operations (FONPYME), exclusively managed by COFIDES.

The youth hostel industry began to emerge in the nineteen eighties and underwent steady growth in the nineteen nineties in the wake of the growing popularity of travel among young people and the development of IT tools. According to World Tourism Organization figures, the industry now accounts for 22 % of arrivals and 18 % of tourist industry revenues world-wide.