IFA Hotel Investments president Joe Sita stands in front of the pool and beach at the North Residences of the Fairmont Palm Jumeirah project.
With Yotel New York opening this month, IFA Hotel Investments president Joe Sita tells Louise Oakley why this new brand represents the future for the hotel industry.
May is a momentous month for Joe Sita. On the 15th of this month, the IFA Hotel Investments (IFA HI) president will open the first city centre Yotel in the enviable location of Times Square West, New York.
The development of the hotel, which parent company IFA Hotels & Resorts (IFA HR) owns alongside its 85% stake in the Yotel brand, has been a labour of love for Sita, who has flown back to the head office in Dubai from New York the day that I meet him.
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Sitting in his office in the North Residences of the Fairmont Palm Jumeirah project — another IFA HR development — Sita is visibly eager to give me a virtual tour of Yotel New York on his iPad.
Having stayed at the Yotel in Gatwick airport when it opened back in 2007, this is a launch I’ve been highly anticipating, no doubt along with many in the industry keen to see the flagship Yotel and the first outside of an airport setting.
In some ways, Yotel New York follows the traditional hotel model, offering room nights as opposed to the shorter multiples of four-hour-long stays at the airport hotels, and F&B options too.
In many other respects, however, Yotel is vastly different from a typical city hotel and it is these aspects that Sita draws my attention to. The sleek white and purple design looks cool, yes, but more importantly, he explains its functionality.
“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,” says Sita, clearly not one to mince his words.
The public areas have that “very Virgin upper-class lounge feel” while the rooms are inspired by an Emirates first-class cabin.
Renowned designers Softroom — responsible for Virgin’s upper-class lounge design — and David Rockwell were enlisted to create the concept, which ultimately is designed to put everything the guest needs right at their “fingertips”.
“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,” explains Sita.
“It offers very ergonomically designed storage, you can put luggage under your bed, you’ve got two lots of hanging space, a fully organic mattress, and the moving bed which [transforms from a sofa to a bed] and creates more space.
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. When you come back in it immediately comes back on. It’s very energy efficient, it’s very quiet, we’ve used much better glazing, the list goes on and on,” continues Sita.
Sita certainly has a point — I’m unable to recall a hotel where my luggage will fit under the bed, but why has no-one done this before?
“Our beds are purpose-designed by a specific manufacturer and they’re motorised as well, so we’re unique,” says Sita.
“We even measured the average-sized piece of luggage that most people who travel for a day or two travel with and these fit perfectly under there.”
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 300-4000ft², says Sita, although in New York, “for the comp-set the rooms are about the right size”.
“We just went to a lot of trouble designing the room so it works well and not just being clever about a fancy piece of art or something’s that’s cute in the room. That’s the difference in this room,” he says.
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