235 | Lodging Leaders Spotlight: Yotel a tech-forward brand worth watching




Lodging Leaders show

Summary: Taco Bell made headlines when it opened a 70-room pop-up hotel in August in Palm Springs, California.<br> It was a marketing scheme that lasted four days.<br> The day The Bell Hotel began to accept reservations, it sold out in two minutes.<br> The guaranteed novelty of staying in a Taco Bell hotel obviously paid off for the company, but it’s not the only fast food business that has ventured into the hotel space.<br> Ten years ago, Simon Woodroffe, founded YO! Sushi, which delivers food on a conveyor belt and has robots that deliver drinks. Woodroffe went on to use his technology and design prowess to co-create Yotel hotels with Gerard Greene.<br> Yotel began with technology-enabled sleeping cabins at airports.<br> Today, Yotel Hotels &amp; Resorts is a sustainable hospitality company that recently launched an ambitious plan to expand its presence around the world.<br> In this episode we talk with Hubert Viriot, CEO of Yotel Hotels &amp; Resorts for the past five years, about the company’s growth strategy.<br> Also featured is Christopher Grey, chief technology officer at Intelity, which recently teamed up with Yotel to scale its innovative, tech-forward guest-services platform.<br> And we include some audio clips of Woodroffe talking about the early vision for Yotel.<br> Resources and Links<br> <br> * <a href="https://www.yotel.com/en/about-yotel/team" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hubert Viriot</a>, CEO of <a href="https://www.yotel.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Yotel Hotels &amp; Resorts</a><br> * <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/greychristopher" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Christopher Grey</a>, chief technology officer at <a href="https://intelity.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Intelity</a><br> * Simon Woodroffe<br> <br>