Marriott wants to lure millennials with cheaper, ultraslim rooms

Washington

AMERICA'S staid, beige hotel rooms, with their sad ironing boards and packaged soaps, have always paled to the promised coziness and cheap chic of vacation-rental sites like Airbnb. So to win back millennials, hotel giant Marriott is doing something very different: Launching a coast-to-coast line of stylish microhotels, where trendy bars take precedent - and the rooms are cheaper and ultraslim.

The hospitality chain is working with investors to open new hotels under the Moxy flag in New York, San Francisco and Seattle that would feature "space-efficient" rooms more likely to be seen in a European hostel. But what they would lack in size, they would gain in youth-targeted perks: A Moxy in Milan features sound-reducing walls, free WiFi, floor-to-ceiling art pieces and "luxurious power showers".