Taking shape just outside Schiphol Airport, near Amsterdam, Citizen M is a new hotel concept making a virtue out of self-service and good wireless connectivity.
In an increasingly mobile world (M stands for mobile), I reckon that many guests would happily swap the luxury of expensive room service in favour of a hotel that offered free international calls to landlines, touch-screen self-check-in and wifi throughout. The hotel’s bold, modernist design, moreover, is also likely to attract the design-loving masses.
The new hotel, which starts taking bookings in October, which will compete with the more podlike Qbic, easyHotel and Yotel!, is similarly hi-tech. The site thinks that we “will love the Philips designed touch screen mood pad. It allows you to control everything in your entire room– television, window blinds, temperature, coloured lighting, and wake-up alarm themes.” Downstairs looks especially good. A self-service 24-hour food outlet, canteenM, sells fresh wraps, sashimi, Dutch beer and Italian coffee.
It is just a shame that the company has not announced a city-centre hotel (although the Happy Hotelier reports that the second Citizen M is causing controversy in Amstelveen, a suburb of Amsterdam) as a Citizen M in the centre of any major city would surely clean up.
