Most hospitality executives would consider creating a hotel brand valued at over $2 billion the capstone of a career. Hans Meyer treated it as a warm-up.
The Dutch entrepreneur spent years as a founding partner and COO of citizenM, where he pioneered the concept of “affordable luxury” that stripped away traditional hotel frills in favour of tech-forward, design-driven rooms at accessible price points. According to Marriott International’s April 2025 announcement, the company paid $355 million to acquire citizenM, which had grown to 37 hotels across 20 cities worldwide.
But Meyer wasn’t there to celebrate. He had already moved on to his next disruption.
From corporate ranks to concept creator
Meyer’s path to hospitality innovation began conventionally enough. After graduating from Hotelschool The Hague in 1993, he built his credentials through senior corporate positions at Golden Tulip Hotels and NH Hoteles, working across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean. According to Hotelschool The Hague, this early experience contributed to the expansion of both brands and gave Meyer insight into what traditional hospitality was getting wrong.
In 2003, he founded HotelsAhead, an Amsterdam-based consultancy focused on developing new hotel concepts and business models. According to Crunchbase, this venture became the laboratory for ideas that would eventually reshape the industry.
The citizenM concept emerged from this period. Meyer served as the initial creator of the brand, working alongside founder Rattan Chadha and a small team of entrepreneurs. According to a 2024 case study from London Business School, the founding group took a fundamentally different approach to innovation – identifying features that weren’t attractive to their core target of tech-savvy, mobile travellers, then eliminating them entirely. The result was a radically efficient hotel model built around modular construction, self-service check-in and communal spaces that replaced traditional lobbies.
citizenM opened its first property at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in 2008. By the time Meyer departed to pursue his next venture, the concept had proven transformative.
Becoming the customer
What Meyer did next was unconventional even by his standards. Rather than immediately launching another brand, he spent two years living as a digital nomad across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Central America.
According to a 2025 interview with Glion Institute, this wasn’t sabbatical tourism. Meyer was conducting intensive field research, embedding himself in the lifestyle of the “global nomads” he would eventually target. During two-month stints in Buenos Aires, Washington DC and Bali, he discovered a gap in worldwide hotel accommodation that no existing concept addressed.
“What I particularly liked about that lifestyle was the ability it gave you to immerse yourself in the local context and the local way of life,” Meyer explained to Glion. The insight became foundational: long-stay travellers didn’t need hotel rooms – they needed homes that happened to offer hotel services.
Building Zoku through obsessive testing
In 2009, Meyer began developing the Zoku concept. Marc Jongerius, previously a partner in private equity, joined as co-founder in late 2010. The pair brought complementary strengths: Meyer’s hospitality expertise and Jongerius’s financial and operational rigour.
Their development process bordered on scientific. According to Glion, Meyer built six prototype rooms rather than the industry standard of one, testing each iteration with 100 – 150 people from the target customer base. The team deployed mobile EEG brain activity scanning and cameras to measure emotional responses when people entered the spaces. They consulted cultural and social anthropologists to ensure communal areas would facilitate effortless connections.
The resulting Zoku Loft is a 25-square-metre micro-apartment that inverts traditional hotel priorities. The bed is elevated and concealed; a four-person table takes centre stage. According to Serviced Apartment News, the design philosophy directly challenged industry orthodoxy: “We believe more in mentalities,” Meyer explained. “Some people in their sixties are ‘more millennial’ than some people in their late twenties.”
In September 2015, Zoku won the Radical Innovation Award at New York’s New Museum, beating concepts from around the world. According to Hotel-Online, the jury and live audience selected Zoku as the idea with the greatest power to change the hotel industry.
Expansion and recognition
Zoku Amsterdam opened in May 2016 with 133 lofts and 500 square metres of rooftop social space. According to Hospitality Net, the brand immediately attracted partnerships with organisations like Startup Fest Europe, positioning itself as the natural home base for international entrepreneurs.
Expansion followed to Copenhagen and Vienna in 2021, then Paris in April 2023. According to the company’s press materials, each property features between 100 and 160 lofts, rooftop coworking spaces, Living Kitchen restaurants and community programming designed to connect residents with locals.
The accolades accumulated. Forbes named Zoku one of the 25 coolest hotels in the world. The brand won the European Hotel Design Award for Best Public Areas and Best Bed & Bathrooms, plus the Entree Award for Best Hotel Concept. In 2018, Zoku Amsterdam became one of the first hotels globally to achieve B Corp certification – a designation that has since expanded to cover all four properties, according to a 2025 company announcement.
The London chapter
The next phase of Zoku’s growth signals continued ambition. In February 2024, the company announced that Patrick Nelson, former Head of International Real Estate at WeWork, had joined to lead expansion into London. According to Hotel Owner, Nelson brings experience scaling WeWork’s European presence from one site to 324 locations across 48 markets.
“The world needs more Zokus,” Nelson stated in the announcement. “I’m proud to help grow the Zoku business and bring Zoku to London.”
For Meyer, now responsible for innovation, culture, concept development and strategic partnerships at Zoku, London represents another opportunity to prove that hospitality can be simultaneously profitable and purposeful.
“One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that meaningful change doesn’t happen alone,” Meyer reflected in Zoku’s October 2025 blog post on B Corp certification. The statement captures something essential about his approach: serial disruption in service of human connection.
Whether Zoku will eventually attract the kind of acquisition interest that made citizenM a Marriott property remains to be seen. Given Meyer’s track record, he may not wait around to find out.
