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Reception design is contemporary, using good materials. There is even a fireplace for snug conversations, along with free copies of the Brimingham Post...
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"small does not need to be low quality, and [City Hotels] have built their hotel to high standards in both materials and design"
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The process obviously requires a size of bedroom that can be easily handled and delivered to site. City Hotels have refined this with their ‘nitenite’ brand, the first of which opened in Birmingham in 2006, the second of which is due to open in Berlin in June 2008. The bedrooms at Birmingham are only 9 square metres each (Yotel at Gatwick are 7 square metres), whilst those in Berlin will be 12. This would be considered small for a bathroom in some hotels, and the development of this kind of ‘pod’ hotel suits locations where there will be a high density of short stay bedroom requirements – city centres in large cities, airports etc.
Yotel are focussing on the airport market with their variation on this theme, but ‘nitenite’ have also gone for the city centre locations. With Birmingham opened and Berlin about to complete you can be forgiven for thinking that they are going for cities beginning with ‘b’ but they are also looking at sites in New York and London as well as other provincial cities.
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Den-like snugness characterises the bedrooms, whilst the wide screen television carries the external view - in this instance Birmingham in the rain. Click to see wideangle view of the bedroom
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The hotel carries the usual quota of rooms for those with disabilities. The bathrooms compare well with similar in hotels with larger bedrooms, click on the image to see the bedroom area with its single bed
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City Hotels make the point that small does not need to be low quality, and have built their hotel to high standards in both materials and design. The comparison they make is with the luxury yacht industry and they have tried to make use of materials that also spell out quality.The pods also have no windows with the view out being given by a 42” television screen linked to a camera on the roof of the building giving a view of the lovely Birmingham city centre. With the width of the room being only fractionally longer than the length of the bed, a 42” screen at the end of the bed brings life size images into close contact with the viewer.
When I was a child I had a den made of lumps of old wood and cardboard in the woods, in which I used to hide away. That sense of cosy secrecy, of a secret ‘nest’, was the first impression of the room.
The bed takes up two thirds of the available space, but careful planning allows for a small desk, and there is an en-suite shower room as well. Neatly designed by an innovative team of architects and interior designers led by the late Neil Tibbatts, the pod is to my eyes spoiled by the air-conditioning unit being mounted under the bed, maximising any noise, whilst it would surely have been better if the system had remote units and just the whisper of air through a vent.
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nitenite cityrooms
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