The story behind a hotel revolution: Yotel!
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
My guest today is Simon Woodroffe – the entrepreneur behind household names including YO! Sushi and Yotel, and also one of the original Dragons on BBC’s Dragons’ Den.
He has been telling me about the travel aspects of his career: founding Yotel, sailing the South Pacific and creating an eco-resort in Thailand. His autobiography, YO! Man, is published on 4 June 2026 by Whitefox Publishing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Wednesday the 27th of May. |
| 0:10.5 | And I'm delighted to be talking to a man who, about a week from now, will be releasing his autobiography. |
| 0:19.1 | He is someone who you will be, I think, very familiar with whether you have |
| 0:24.3 | watched at the original series of the BBC's Dragons Den, or indeed you've ever decided to take a |
| 0:31.8 | plate of sushi from one of the conveyors in YoSushi or indeed stay in a a yo tell. He is Simon Woodruff. His autobiography |
| 0:41.5 | is called Yo man, rock and roll robots and reinventing British dining. I want to talk though, |
| 0:49.9 | Simon, about your travels and you're speaking to me actually from Thailand. What are you doing there? |
| 0:55.6 | Thailand, believe it or not, Simon, is my home. And I'm married to a Thai lady Pym and I'm very |
| 1:04.1 | happy here and I travel the world still and have always spent all of my life travelling. Isn't it funny |
| 1:10.7 | how life works out? |
| 1:11.8 | And it's just been a surprise that that happens. |
| 1:14.5 | And here I am. |
| 1:15.6 | If I may, and this is published on your excellent website, you are 74. |
| 1:21.0 | You have seen an awful lot more life, I would guess, than the average 10 people. |
| 1:26.1 | In particular, people would have be, I think, startled to learn that you were, for example, in Boston, young offenders institution, as they used to be known. |
| 1:37.0 | At the age of 19, I sold drugs in the sort of back in the hippie days when it was sort of okay to do that. |
| 1:45.7 | And I wasn't a very profitable dealer, but it was my first entrepreneurial tryout, I suppose. |
| 1:52.1 | And I'm very glad I got stopped in my tracks early on. |
| 1:55.8 | That's very philosophical. |
| 1:57.4 | Since then, you've been rather more successful. |
| 2:00.2 | I'd like to talk in particular about |
| 2:03.8 | Yotel, because that has basically revolutionised a lot of the accommodation sector, particularly |
... |
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