Skift Take
Hotel chains often blur into a beige haze of indistinguishability, but Marriott created Moxy Hotels to stand out like the neon signs often found in its lobbies. Many Gen Zs like it. But after 10 years, can it grow up without growing old?
Remember 2014? Pharrell's "Happy" was inescapable, everyone on social media was dumping ice water on their heads for charity, and Marriott decided it was high time to create its first select-service brand aimed at 20-somethings.
Moxy Hotels was the hotel giant's effort to be cool. Against the odds, it has succeeded well enough. As it turns 10, the brand now has over 135 properties open. In Europe alone, it plans to open 17 more hotels by 2025.
Moxy's genesis took years but had an early recipe. Take one part Ikea (the parent company of Ikea had manufacturing ties to the first pre-fab Moxys), add developers wanting to pile as many guests per square foot as possible, choose spaces in gentrifying neighborhoods or districts without hotels affordable enough for Gen Z, and top it off with a heavy pour of "lifestyle" branding.
"We want it to be a bar that just happens to have rooms on top of it," said Brian Jaymont, senior director and global brand leader.
Deemphasizing the Hotel RoomFor decades, the hotel industry operated on a simple premise: the room is everything. Spacious accommodations, plush beds, and in-room amenities were the yardsticks by which hotels measured themselves. Moxy, however, flipped this conventional wisdom on its head.
Moxy's rooms are compact — averaging just 185 square feet — and stripped of traditional hot