Discuss the statement with focus on the way in which citizenM has embedded innovation in its business, please write up your evaluation in approximately 500 words.

Defining the Organization's Strategic Direction Reinventing Hotels: citizenM In 2008, Michael Levie, Rattan Chadha, and Robin Chadha set out to create a new kind of hotel chain. Convinced that innovation in the hotel industry had stagnated, they believed that there was an opportunity to create more value for customers that were frequent travelers, or "Mobile Citizens of the World." They named their new hotel chain "citizenM," and they set out to rethink what dimensions customers really cared about, and which they didn't really value. First, the founders concluded that frequent travelers wanted to be in stylish and modern hotels that reflected their own identities, but they did not really care about front desks and portersafter all, who wants to wait in line after a long flight, and why would they need a porter to get the luggage to the room if they had already managed to get it from the airport? Instead, the chain could greatly reduce both costs and waiting lines by having self-service check-in machines that dispensed keys (similar to the self-service machines that dispense boarding passes at airports) and eliminating porters. Second, in cosmopolitan cities such as London or New York, Levie and the Chadhas did not believe that it made sense to try to compete with the local bars and restaurants by offering premium service inside the hotel. Instead they cre- ated a stylish and comfortable space with an open-plan round-the-clock kitchen, where customers can help themselves to a quick meal whenever they wanted by simply using their credit card. Third, the founders reasoned that most travelers do not want to hang out in their hotel rooms. They thus made the bedrooms small and pod-like-similar to those offered in cruise ships. A typical citizenM room is 172 square feet, signifi- cantly smaller than the average 280 square feet of a London hotel room or the average 250 square feet of a Manhattan hotel room. However, they outfitted the rooms with king-sized beds and the kind of high quality bedding, upscale fixtures, big fluffy towels, and free Internet service that frequent travelers would be likely to have at home. The rooms also had "mood padselectronic tablets that guests could use to control the television, lighting, and temperature. The idea was to create "affordable luxury."d By eliminating many of the costly features of a typical hotel, citizenM's construction and staffing costs averaged 40 percent less than other four-star hotels. This resulted in nightly prices that were roughly $50 less than those of other four-star hotels in its major markets. The combination of the comfortable and stylish ambiance with affordable prices resulted in occupancy rates that were consistently higher than industry averages-over 95 percent compared to 85 percent. As noted by Robin Chadha, "We've started from scratch, looked at the behavior of this new generation of travelers and built our company accord- ingly.... We're an online company with no reservations teameverything on the Internetand we use technology to offset staff costs. All the savings, we pass on to our guests."e Within a year after opening, citizenM was ranked by the Sunday Times, CNBC, and Fortune as the best business hotel. It went on to win the "Trendiest Hotel in the World" from TripAdvisor (2010 & 2011), Fodor's 100 Hotel awards (2011), and "Best New Hotel Concept" from Entrepreneur (2013). By 2015, the chain had hotels in Amsterdam, Glasgow, London, New York, Paris, and Rotterdam