We flew from Nice to Charles de Gaulle airport arriving at terminal 2F (one of 7 terminals labelled A to G within “terminal 2”). From there we took the inter-terminal train to terminal 3 which is close to a number of airport hotels including citizenM. Unlike the other hotels in the area which are plain concrete and glass, the outside of the citizenM looks like the front page of a graphic novel.
When you walk in the door of the hotel, instead of a hotel desk, you are met with a collection of iPads. Essentially, you have been hired at zero cost to the hotel to act as the person behind the desk – to check yourself in. That includes scanning your own passport, selecting your room and creating a key-card from one of the collection of blanks next to the iPad. At the end of the process a tiny printer prints out a thumbnail-sized piece of paper with your room number on it.
When you arrive at your room, the TV set over the bed welcomes you by name and indicates that you can control everything in the room with an iPad that has been placed next to the bed. The bed by the way is king-sized and next to the window, with the length of the bed taking up the width of the room. This means you can’t walk around to the other side of the bed. The person sleeping on that side of the bed has to crawl over the bed to get there and in the middle of the night crawl over the other person to get to and from the bathroom. This is common in sailboats but was our first such experience in a hotel.
The other side of the room has an oval-shaped pod with shower and toilet and opposite that an oval-shaped unit with sink, shelves, garbage pail and mini-fridge all perfectly designed to fit together.
With the iPad you can control the TV (on/off, select channels, volume), control the lighting (on/off, dimming, colour spectrum – green, blue, yellow, red), open or close the day or night blinds and adjust the temperature.
It doesn’t end there. When we went down for supper in the restaurant/bar, there was a QR code to get the menu (but you can get a normal one if you ask) and you can order through the citizenM app. You can also order at the teller who will give you your drinks and hand you one of those disks that flashes when something is ready – in this case your meal. You then go pick it up yourself – no waiters required. The next morning there was a more standard buffet-style breakfast at a fixed price.
Did we feel that the savings in reduced staff was passed on to the customer – not really. Did it seem a bit ridiculous – yes. Would we stay at that hotel again – probably. When you compare with normal hotels where all the controls for temperature, lighting, remote for the TV etc are different and often don’t work the way you expect them to or don’t work at all, the iPad control did it all without any confusion. We probably had one of the best night’s sleeps at a hotel that we have ever had – despite the sailboat-like experience going to and from the bathroom at night.
WR Foster 