citizenM hotel Glasgow

Class: Budget

Style: Cutting edge

Rooms: 198

It’s easy enough to get wrapped up in Scotland’s past, especially in the countryside: many visitors opt for a bed and breakfast, a village guesthouse or a classic golf resort. The cities are too often overlooked, especially among design junkies. There’s more to Glasgow than Charles Rennie Mackintosh — in the city center you'll find the decidedly modern CitizenM.

This small chain started with an award-winning Amsterdam airport hotel (really), and their second effort is just as ambitious. Clean modern lines mix with modern utility as rooms and common spaces are laid out logically and cheerfully, all filled with abundant natural light, modern conveniences, and a vaguely Nordic practicality.

Visitors will detect this straight away, for even the lobby is cleverly divided into a series of living and working areas, each outfitted with Vitra and Eames furnishings, iMacs, and flat-screen televisions. It’s meant to look like anything but a traditional hotel lobby. Even the queues and waylays of the traditional hotel check-in are vanquished in favor of a digital self-service, whereby rooms are customized per guest’s selections and delivered electronically onto the room keycard.

The one concession to value is that the rooms are not large. That said, it’s in the layout of these rooms that this space savings was truly made. All boast extra-large king-sized beds, wall-to-wall windows, bespoke shower systems and what CitizenM calls their MoonPad device, which controls the temperature, ambient lighting, alarm, and flat screen television. Considering the CitizenM’s mandate of affordable, utilitarian chic — combined with its desirable location — your jaunt to the Highlands might have to wait until next time.