With plans to open 12 new hotels by 2018 and up to 50 in the next five years, Yotel needs an adaptable design that’s able to keep up with its rapid expansion plans. In fact, Jason Brown, chief development officer of Yotel, believes part of the reason why the brand has expanded so quickly is due to its increasingly flexible design concept.
“The way we think about Yotel is a very British concept, which is a kit of parts,” he explains. In this kit of parts, there are multiple elements that will always remain in a Yotel property: The check-in kiosk, the Serta SmartBed, and the techno wall in the cabins. Another unchanging part of the Yotel brand is efficiency, Brown says. Though all these parts come together to make a whole, the way it is packaged for guests depends entirely on the location.
“Ultimately, we are trying to deliver people time,” Brown says. “And we can utilize the design to make the pain points of a typical hotel experience as seamless as possible. That allows us to go into markets like Dubai or San Francisco with two totally different design builds.” Dubai, he says, is a massive ground-up project with larger cabin sizes than Yotel’s norm of about 175 square feet. In San Francisco, the company is pursuing an adaptive reuse project with similar cabin sizes to what Yotel has delivered in North America before, but fitted to the older building’s needs. And in Singapore, a more technologically advanced room plays into an Asian-based customer’s expectations. Every Yotel property is designed with the local guest in mind.
“We believe our design allows us not only to get into markets where we are able to flex the Yotel cabin concept to meet the local needs, but also allows us to make good on that promise of time and an affordable luxury experience.”
With so many new brands coming on to the market delivering a similarly affordable luxury experience geared toward the tech-savvy traveler, such as Marriott’s Moxy and Best Western’s Vīb, it’s key to continue evolving as the company develops in new locations. Brown says Yotel keeps a close eye on the competition, and is keen to remain fresh as more hotel companies try catering to the millennial mindset.
“If we were just doing the same thing over and over again, we would limit our growth, and we wouldn’t be interesting in a lot of international markets,” he says. “There would be nothing that catches you as a consumer to say, ‘You know what? I’m in Paris or I’m in Singapore or I’m in San Fran, but I’m staying at a Yotel because I like the local design and I like the efficiency of the product.’”
