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large drawer placed under the beds,
fit to hold luggage. Also, Italian
products are set in the bathrooms
and available in-room music was
selected by DJs from Amsterdam,
Brussels, London and Paris.
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF CITIZENM
Of course, it wasn’t just DJs who
were brought in to achieve the cool
– to keep the minimalist chic feel in
place, citizenM cooperated with
European artists to attain a 26-foot
installation, Walking in Times Square,
by British artist Julian Opie, hotel
shop books curated by MENDO of
Amsterdam, austere Swiss Vitra
furniture, and a vast collection of
contemporary art and photography.
Mackenzie Allison of wheretraveler.
com described the flair of the hotel
as “a retro ‘70s version of the
Bauhaus style.”
Doreen Cramer, guest of the original
citizenM Amsterdam location, said, “I
can’t say it compares to anywhere
I’ve stayed before. Right from
check-in everything was different
from an ordinary hotel. Walking
through the red glass entrance you’re
greeted by a self check-in computer
station. A bank of computers greets
you in a very unique atmosphere of
black bookshelves, funky chandeliers
and comfy living rooms. The computer
gives you your room number on a
piece of paper, you swipe your room
key at the computer to activate it
and your room key doubles as a
luggage tag.”
The cool, collect style purveys into
the 230 rooms of the hotel alongside
that luggage tag key. At 170 square
feet, they feature king-size beds,
Hansgrohe rain showers with colored
ceiling lights, Samsung touch-screen
MoodPads to customize all aspects
of the room including lighting hue,
temperature, blinds, wake-up alarm
music and digital art displays,
wall-to-wall windows, complimentary
stocked bottled water, free WiFi,
and Skype phone rates.
“Just walking down the hall to get
to your room is an experience,” said
Cramer. “Flat white walls with just the
door knobs for texture, travel quotes
printed at different angles on the walls
and doors, a life size mural of a suited
man with an elephant’s head on the
wall at the end of our hall.”
Don’t think that this personalized
experience comes with your runof-the-mill concierge desk either.
Instead of suited employees,
citizenM employs multilingual
Ambassadors, who serve as jacksof-all-trades for hotel guests.
Cramer said that the staff was
“great, young. When we first arrived,
they happily helped us check in at
the computer banks. We had also
been trying to figure out what to do
in Amsterdam in the short time we
had on our layover, so we asked out
new friends. We showed him the tour
brochure we had picked up at the
airport and when he saw the prices
of the tours his reactions was, ‘Why
pay all that money when you can
take the train downtown and I will
tell you exactly where to go and
what to do!’ And he did and we did
and had a great time and spent less
than half of what the tour would
have cost us.”
So where did these innovative
hospitable ideas stem from? Rattan
Chadha of the Mexx clothing empire
founded the chain in 2008 with his
first hotel in Amsterdam, where it
23
quickly started picking up tons of
international travel awards including
Most Cutting-Edge Boutique Awards
by Fodor’s in 2011 and Trendiest
H