DUTCH hotel bosses have chosen Glasgow as the site for their first hi-tech hotel outside Holland.
DUTCH hotel bosses have chosen Glasgow as the site for their first hi-tech hotel outside Holland.
The citizenM group will shortly begin work on the £100million hotel next to the Theatre Royal.
But not all of the 180-room hotel will be built in Glasgow. The bespoke rooms will be created from scratch in a Dutch factory and shipped over to Scotland, where they will be slotted into place on top of each other.
The 275,000 sq ft property will be the first built outside the Netherlands before a rollout in 20 cities, including London, Barcelona, Berlin, Milan, Brussels, Copenhagen, Prague, Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Moscow and Budapest.
Bosses say their ethos is "affordable luxury for the people".
The designer rooms offer a power rain shower - which looks like the beam me up, Scotty' transporter in Star Trek - remote-
controlled ambient lighting and a touch-screen mood pad', which allows guests to select lighting, temperature and music in six settings.
Other hi-tech features include free Wi-Fi, electronic window blinds, free on-demand movies and an alarm clock that can be programmed to wake me gently' or wake me wildly'.
Michael Levie, chief executive of the hotel group, said: "CitizenM offers a new type of hotel experience for sophisticated travellers, who value personal choice, contemporary design, friendly technology and the proximity to a city."
The off-site completion of the hi-tech rooms, or pods, inspired by accommodation on luxury yachts and private jets, will allow the hotel to be built in just 10 months.
It also enables the group to keep prices down, with room rates starting at around £54 a night.
The eight-floor hotel is named after "mobile citizens of the world" - citizenM for short - who the company are trying to attract.
The first citizenM hotel, with 230 rooms, opened at Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam at the beginning of the year and a second hotel will follow in Amsterdam city centre next year.
In many of its sites, citizenM provides a stylish canteen, with a 24-hour choice of sandwiches, salads, sushi and hot dishes. A bar is also available and coffee is prepared by in-house baristas.
A spokeswoman for citizenM said: "We are still considering whether to have retail at street level or to set up a larger canteen area.
"We really want to give the citizens of Glasgow something they'll enjoy.
"No-one else has their own off-site factory where they make the rooms from scratch and send them across the world.
"We really wanted an A1 location for the hotel because we like to be near all the cultural attractions wherever we are based."
Work on the hotel will begin next January and is due to end in October.
It will stretch from Hope Street along Renfrew Street, next to the Broadway office development now being built. Both properties secured planning permission earlier this year.
Business leaders today welcomed the hotel's arrival at a time when the credit crunch is affecting almost every area of life.
Richard Cairns, chief executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, said: "The fact that an innovative company like citizenM has chosen Glasgow to open one of its first hotels outside Holland shows that, despite short-term pressures, the city continues to have a strong reputation as both a short-stay tourist and conference destination.
"This modern facility will be a strong addition to Glasgow's city centre hotel scene."
