Business travel
Micro hotels
Rooms without a view
Jan 12th 2012, 18:05 by A.B.
A PIECE in this week's Economist looks at developments in Britain's budget-hotel sector. In particular, it examines plans being made for the Trocadero, a Victorian building in the heart of the West End, where a new hotel will have 600 identical windowless rooms of ten square metres each.
The niche looks promising. Budget hotels in London had an occupation rate of 84% in 2010, better than their grander equivalents in the capital and the 69% occupancy in the rest of England, according to Miles Quest of the British Hospitality Association (BHA). Yet Britain still has proportionately fewer low-cost hotels than many other countries; budget brands make up a quarter of the French market, for example, and a third of the American one, reckons the BHA.
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Trocadero could import "Capsule Hotel" modules from Japan, as 8 capsules could fit in a 10 sq.m room (2.5 sq.m capsules stacked two high), increasing the number of available rooms to 4000, plus communal lavatory and bath/shower...
@Anjin-San, that just might work, though some Westerners (and perhaps some non-Westerners) would, or perhaps would, feel somewhat claustrophobic in such confined quarters.
I've never stayed in one, though I know a few people who either live in Japan or visit there who've tried them; none of the three or four Westerners in that group liked it, and said they wouldn't stay in one again, precisely because of feeling as if they were in something of a "coffin for the living," as one put it. However, they *also* said they definitely could see a market, even among Westerners, especially backpackers and others on very tight budgets.
Would I consider one? Well, it would depend on where I was or wished to go. In a market such as London, if I couldn't find a true budget hotel (as opposed to those that are billed as "budget hotels" but end up costing 125 pounds per night, which may be "budget" to someone such as Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, but it sure isn't what *I* consider the word to mean.
Again -- I do think there's a definite market for such hotels (both the Japanese-style and the style described in the article).