citizenM rewrote the rules. Marriott paid the $355m price.

When the business launched in 2008, the safe assumption was that travellers valued marble lobbies, pillow menus, and a good loyalty programme. The model was clear, predictable, and, increasingly, stale.

citizenM saw it differently. They truly listened to customers.

In doing so, they were designing for the next generation of travellers: tech-savvy, experience-hungry, design-conscious, and tired of traditional hotels that didn’t fit the way they lived and worked.

While others clung to outdated luxury, citizenM quietly built a new kind of hospitality, one based on customer mindsets, not conventions.

As co-founder Michael Levie put it:

“To me, ‘risk’ often means that we do not dare to try anything new. Without risk, we do not create.”

Reading the signals others missed

citizenM’s founders saw two things before most of the industry caught on:

1. Travellers were starting to value experience over opulence.

2. Technology was a critical enabler for what customers wanted.

   
   

Take the train but drink champagne

This is the brilliant insight from co-founder, Robin Chadha. 

A recognition that there was a whole new value-conscious, traveller mindset. They wanted a differentiated experience, one that was simple, personal and memorable, but they weren’t prepared to pay through the nose for it.

Why pay a fortune for a room you barely spend any time in, when you can spend the money on a night out or a day shopping?

Getting the balance right is key to pulling this off. citizenM's rooms are compact yet luxurious, featuring XL king-size beds, mood lighting, and rain showers. The brand's living rooms replace traditional lobbies, offering vibrant spaces filled with art, books, and designer furniture, encouraging guests to work, relax, and socialise.

Added to this, the brand has deployed a Random Acts of Kindness strategy - this flies in the face of traditional loyalty schemes, where rewards are often seemingly out of reach. It directly empowers the hotel team to recognise their customers, their needs, their staying occasion and a whole host of unexpected situations that can arise when people travel.

These acts of kindness don’t stop at a complimentary drink. It could be an entire stay on the house, or in one case, when a customer was let down, the hotel team jumped in to provide personal shopping and make-up artist support. As the website states,

“We want our ambassadors to be completely free to do what’s best for each guest.”

A focus on simplicity and control

Through personal experience and listening to travellers, the founding team knew that hotels were often the final stage of a friction-filled trip. And the worst thing? They invariably added to the stress as opposed to being the panacea.

So, citizenM resolved to flip the script.

Back in 2008, they observed that many hotels were reliant on disconnected and outdated tech platforms. An immediate win would be to build a techstack where the backend was designed to support future customer experiences, and that’s what they did.

They knew that if they could put customers in control, they were backing a winner.

Borrowing from emerging innovation in the airline industry, they replaced check-in queues with a 60-second, self-service solution. Doing away with cumbersome control systems, they created a single solution (in-room tablet or mobile app) that covered lighting, temperature, blinds and entertainment. And greater connectivity, allowing customers to stream from phone to big screen.

They’ve continued to keep tech at the fore and subsequently enable customers to check in in advance of arrival, and select the room they wanted and preset lighting and entertainment. Features that have since been copied by others. 

As Levie explained:

“We give our guests more for less while 'only selling a night of sleep' in an understated fashion.”

They weren’t competing on grandiosity. They were competing on what actually matters at 11pm after a long-haul flight or an intense day of meetings.

A unique model delivering unique results

Another crucial (but often overlooked) part of citizenM’s success is how they structured the business behind the scenes.

Unlike traditional hotel operators who separate ownership, management, and branding, citizenM brought everything under one roof:

• They own the buildings.

• They operate the hotels.

• They manage the brand.

  
  

This fully integrated model gives them total control over quality, design, technology, and experience.

It also allowed them to scale with precision, without diluting the concept or having to compromise for third parties, and this is best reflected in their vibrant, living-room-style spaces filled with contemporary art, curated bookshelves, designer furniture, and craft coffee bars. 

Scaling smartly without losing the soul

Since 2008, citizenM has grown steadily, now operating 36 hotels in major cities worldwide, including London, New York, Paris, Zurich, and Tokyo.

Their ability to scale without diluting the brand has caught attention across the industry. 

So no surprises yesterday when it was announced that Marriott acquired a significant stake in citizenM in a deal worth $355 million, but citizenM retains control over its brand and operations.

Why? Because the model only works if it stays true to the original signals:

• Keep it guest-focused.

• Keep it tech-enabled.

• Keep it community-driven.

  
  

As Lennert de Jong, CEO, said:

“citizenM was created for frequent travellers, and Marriott's distribution capabilities will allow us to bring our unique experience to even more guests worldwide.”

The goal isn’t growth for growth’s sake. It’s growth without losing identity.

Final thought

citizenM didn’t disrupt hospitality with a gimmick. They did it by listening harder to behavioural signals, to changing expectations, to the realities of modern life on the move.

They reimagined luxury for a new era:

• Less marble. More meaning.

• Less theatre. More control.

• Less compromise. More community.

  
  

In a world where travel habits keep evolving, citizenM remains a sharp reminder that the winners aren’t the ones who copy. They’re the ones who listen first and build second.