My, my, you people waste no time rating a new hotel, do you? Citizen M's outpost at Amsterdam Schiphol airport hasn't even been open six months and you all rush to the Internets to talk about it. So what do you have to say about it?
In short, you love it. Here are some of your choice words:
"Everything was clean, worked perfectly, HOT water, fluffy white pillows... and friendly, helpful staff."
"The rooms are small, but well laid out so that the room feels bigger than it is."
"If you don't mind a 20-minute train ride to get into the city, this is the place to stay in Amsterdam."
"I wouldn't recommend this hotel to older people or people with kids, but for single travelers or couples, it's perfect."
OK, we get it! You like Amsterdam Schiphol, you really like it! But you might have to curb your enthusiasm for a CitizenM Hotel near you. The hotel's promising more locations, including Glasgow, but no other new cities have been formally announced.
Had a different experience at the hotel? Share it with us in the comments.
We already heard that the innovative pod-ness that is the Citizen M hotel chain is planning on opening the CitizenM Glasgow sometime around October next year, but now we're hearing more info about it.
The Scottish version of CitizenM will have 180 rooms and they're building it next to the Theatre Royal. Well, in fact, they're building most of it in Amsterdam: all the "pod" rooms will actually be built in a factory in Amsterdam, then shipped to Glasgow and "slotted into place on top of each other". Neat.
The marketing fizz is always that CitizenM is "affordable luxury"--affordable in Glasgow apparently means rooms starting from £54 (US$100) which we have to agree is reasonable. Since CitizenM plans to have these identical rooms wherever they build their hotels, you can pretty much refer to our in-depth Amsterdam review to figure out if you'll like the Glasgow version or not. Easy, isn't it?
Lately, we've been pondering the utility, acceptance and sketch-potential of social networks within hotels. It's not necessarily hotels' Facebook or MySpace pages we're concerned with here (although some hotels are doing good stuff with those things, and hooray for them!).
We mean hotels who set up their own networks -- sort of like the Pod Hotel'sPod Community Blog -- where people who are staying in a particular hotel at a given time can communicate with each other and find other same-time guests to meet up with, hang out with, or "et cetera" with. Will people buy into the concept? Will it turn out to be a sketchy Craiglist-esque collection of people advertising for casual anonymous "encounters?"
Well, we're still wondering. But CitizenM in Amsterdam has launched a kind of social network on their website; something new that may prove to be the guinea pig to watch for our answer.
After our story the other day about the intriguing cocktails that were served at the Citizen M hotel in Amsterdam, like a Mobile Martini and a Vespa Martini, we decided we wanted more...more drink descriptions of course.
So we flagged down a hotel rep who sent over this complete list of the drinks. And it turns out the Vespa Martini is actually a Vesper Martini, a James Bond-inspired drink.
CitizenM is going ahead with its expansion, opening two hotels in the Netherlands before the year is out and a hotel in Glasgow in 2009. But also on the list are more UK cities like London, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Manchester. Ultimately, the hotel would like to open 20 hotels withing five years in major European cities.
Meanwhile, reviews for the first CitizenM hotel in Amsterdam are extremely good. And in it we found something sort of interesting. The hotel offers specialty cocktails with transportation themes like the Mobile Martini and the Vespa Martini. Just another reason to love this new design hotel concept.
[Ed. Note: Our Scandinavian correspondent Coulter returns again for the complete review of the first-ever CitizenM Hotel. Enjoy.]
Even from the outside there seems to be something a bit different about the CitizenM at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. Unassuming from a distance, as you follow the embedded lights in the sidewalk, you'll start to notice that there is something a bit different about this hotel.
It looks like a stack of a few hundred individually made concrete cubicles with wall-to-wall windows.
The reason, because that's exactly what it is, CitizenM's prefab hotel units are at the very core of what this hotel strives to be. The same hotel experience no matter where you go, with each room identical to the room next to it.
Their tag line is “Affordable Luxury,” a modern design hotel at budget prices and it's these pre-made cubicles that allow them to deliver at least partially on that promise.
[Ed. Note: Our Scandinavian correspondent Coulter was on the scene for the opening party of the first-ever CitizenM Hotel. Enjoy.]
Last week CitizenM opened it's first hotel at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. This location is one of 20 new hotels CitizenM plans to roll out through Europe in the coming months and years.
This being the hotel's first major event, CitizenM did their best to impress and after a few hours of non-stop drinking, I found myself fairly well-impressed.
For Rattan Chadha, founding partner and CEO Michael Levie, this event was all about branding and from the multiple speeches to the increasingly drunk PR people walking around, you couldn't escape the words "affordable luxury."
With the idea of CitizenM being a modern design hotel at budget prices, you must be wondering--did the hotel meet their tag line? You'll have to read the hotel review tomorrow for that answer, but the party itself did a good job of showing off the hotels finer points.
As promised we had a spy attend the opening of the CitizenM Hotel near Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport on Tuesday and he's reported back with this killer snapshot of the lobby area. The full review will come next week and it involves dolls on the bed and capsule showers. Yeah, it's very interesting.
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by jennm
