Yotel to open pod hotel at Related site

From the creators of European airport “pod” hotels comes what could be the city’s largest hotel opening next year. Yotel, which launched three years ago by offering four-hour hotel stays to business travelers, is opening a 669-room hotel on 42nd Street and 10th Avenue. The 25-story tower, at the site of the Related Companies’ $800 million West Side residential complex, will cater to a somewhat less transient crowd. Not to be confused with the Pod Hotel at 230 East 51st Street, which caters to a younger clientele with bunk beds offered up for less than $100 per night, rooms at the new Yotel will be twice the size of Yotel’s airport pods and will cost between $200 and $250 per night. Yotel partners Simon Woodroffe and Gerard Greene said longer-term hotels have always been in their plans — their $285 million deal with Related was signed more than two years ago — but they’ve made mistakes, particularly in construction, as their company has grown. They said New York’s Yotel, which was designed by Rockwell and is already half-built, will cost £20,000 — around $27,054 — per room to build. IFA Hotels & Resorts backed the project and Woodroffe and Greene said their investment will have paid off within six to seven years’ time. [Financial Times]