Disruptive innovation strikes at the foundations of the U.K. hotel market

About a month ago I got a text message from a friend here in Taiwan asking me if I knew of any cheap hotels in London. Actually, I didn't have a clue as I've only been to London twice in my life, a long time ago. I remembered reading an interesting post on the Innosight blog about disruptive innovation in the hotel market, though, so I sent her a link to the hotel that was in the article, Yotel.com.


The BBC ran an interesting piece about Yotel.com and easyHotel (part of the easyJet group) today. What was really interesting was finding out about the origins of the cheap hotel concept: the idea came not from within the hotel industry but outside it. Check out the video and see for yourself. (You'll need Real Player to see this)

The video below will give you an idea what one of the "cabins" is like. What's really amazing about truly disruptive innovations is the amount of free media coverage that they get. If these innovations were incremental improvements (along a sustaining trajectory), they wouldn't even be noticed.




I'll have to ask my friend where she ended up staying the next time I see her. So what do you think, would you be willing to give this a try the next time you're passing through London?

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