Yotel New York to open on May 15

The flagship Yotel branded hotel will open in Times Square West, New York on May 15, IFA Hotel Investments (IFA HI) president Joe Sita told Hotelier.

The 669-room hotel, which IFA HI parent company IFA Hotels & Resorts owns alongside its 85% stake in the Yotel brand, is the first standalone Yotel to be opened outside of an airport.

“Yotel New York is very ergonomically designed whereas a lot of the other hotels and hotel rooms — these so called boutique or designer hotels — they’re aesthetically pleasing but they’re functionally atrocious,” said Sita.

The public areas have that “very Virgin upperclass lounge feel” while the rooms are inspired by an Emirates first-class cabin, he explained.

Renowned designers Softroom — responsible for Virgin’s upper-class lounge design — and David Rockwell were enlisted to create the concept.

“We’ve gone to a lot of trouble to design this room to make sure that all the sockets are in the right place, the lighting is well thought of, the bathroom has a monsoon showerhead, the window is at the back, there’s a 32’ flat screen TV with full ipod connectivity,” said Sita.

“We’ve got a full heat pump system that’s quiet and because the hotel is Silver LEED-certified, when you leave the room everything shuts down automatically. It’s very energy efficient, it’s very quiet, we’ve used much better glazing, the list goes on and on,” he continued.

This means that Yotel New York’s 669 rooms, which start at 170ft², can be much smaller than the average-sized four-star hotel room of between 300-400ft², said Sita, although in New York, “for the comp-set the rooms are about the right size”.

The hotel aims to cater for all markets, he said, from business travellers visiting the nearby Javits convention centre for one or two nights to European travellers that might stay three or four nights.

“We’re not in any way trying to discriminate against any of the market segments. We think we’ve got a product that fits all markets and all people,” asserted Sita.

“I think what’s happened is that we’ve gone through phases in the industry where hotels have been very compartmentalised into saying ‘this is either a budget or economy hotel, a four-star or upscale, upper upscale, or luxury hotel’.

“Why I believe [Yotel] is the future is because this is a product that appeals to all markets,” asserts Sita. “The way we position Yotel is affordable luxury. So we provide a very high quality product in terms of the fit-out, the ergonomics, the MEP and the LEED certification — typically all of this used to be confined to the more upscale or upper upscale and luxury products where you have space as well as high quality fit out.

“What we’ve done is really combine those things and you can actually have a very high quality product and an exceptional experience in a much smaller space. And that means that on a value for money basis, bang for buck basis — whether you’re a developer who’s looking to maximise the amount of product you can build on a particular bit of real estate or you’re a customer who’s looking for better value for money — this is the way of the future,” said Sita.

Yotel New York will be used to showcase the Yotel brand to investors and strategic partners in order to help fuel its expansion, added Sita.

IFA HI is a subsidiary of international resort and residential developer IFA Hotels & Resorts, which is listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange, with a market capitalisation of US $1 billion.