Edinburgh International Conference Centre to open its own hotel and hotel school

The project will mean EICC can offer conference organisers guaranteed hotel rooms within a few hundred yards of the conference centre - a problem which currently loses it around £1 million worth of business every year.The four-star hotel will also have rooms available for tourists and business travellers.It will be operated by EICC under a franchise with an unnamed international brand which at the moment has no hotels in the Capital.And there are plans to open the hotel up to the community as well.The hotel school will be run in partnership with Edinburgh College and is eventually expected to be training up to 200 people per year.Both hotel and school, being built by developers Quartermile, are scheduled to open in summer 2023.The city council’s finance committee will be asked to approve the proposal on Thursday. The plan is for the council to take a 25-year lease on the hotel and sub-lease it to EICC. But the development is being financed by an international pension fund and sources stress there is no cost to the council or EICC, which is a subsidiary of an arms-length council company.The hotel will create 202 new jobs and is expected to be profitable from its first year of operation. The money it makes will be used to finance ongoing capital investment needed to keep the conference centre up to date.A source close to the project said: “One of the biggest problems in the hospitality and tourism industry is recruiting experienced and qualified staff.“The aim is to formalise the education process, make it more robust to ensure people are work-ready and raise standards in the industry.“At the moment, courses are typically 80 per cent theory and 20 per cent practical, but this will make it much more like 50-50. The trainees could range from school leavers to retired people and include hard-to-reach groups.”The source said EICC was losing an estimated £1m a year because existing hotels were not willing to allow large-scale booking of rooms more than 12 months ahead, as conference organisers require.“Every penny of profit that is made will be reinvested back into the business.”City finance convener Alasdair Rankin said councillors were looking at the detailed business case for the project.“It’s clear that this project could offer significant employment and training opportunities for local people, as well as forming an important part of the overall regeneration of the Haymarket gap site and helping to ensure the continued success of the EICC going forward, with no expected call on council budgets.“A final decision on whether or not to proceed with this will be made by all councillors on March 12.”