easyHotel plc announced that it has acquired a freehold site in central Dublin, Ireland, to develop a purpose-built, freehold easyHotel. Located on the corner of Benburb Street and Wood Lane, Dublin, the site already has planning permission in place for a 96-bedroom hotel. However, the Group believes there is potential to extend the development further to a 130-bedroom hotel and will apply to vary the existing planning permission accordingly. This freehold site has been acquired for €9.0 million. The 130-bedroom hotel is expected to have a total investment cost of €18 million and will be funded using cash from the Group's balance sheet, together with local debt financing. The investment in Dublin is the Group's third new site since its successful fundraising in March 2018. It also marks easyHotel's second owned hotel investment in Europe with the Group's first owned European hotel, easyHotel Barcelona (204 rooms), due to open this summer. In support of its growth plans, the company continues to expand its development pipeline of owned hotels in key tourist and city centre destinations across both the UK and Europe. As previously announced, four new owned hotels (517 rooms) are expected to open by the end of the current calendar year. easyHotel Maastricht opened at the beginning of July taking the total number of hotels in the Group to 28. There are a further four new franchised hotels (336 rooms) nearing completion, and although the official openings have been delayed, they are still expected to open by the end of the current calendar year.