Slashdot Mirror
Coffin Hotels Opening Near You
An anonymous reader writes "Britain will soon see the launch of a chain of automated, short-term hotels for travelers and businesspeople." From the article: "Each soundproof cabin will contain a sofa that converts into a double bed, a pull down desk, closet space, adjustable mood lighting, a shower, wireless Internet, an iPod connection and a flat-screen TV. Check-in and check-out will be automated, but food and drinks will be available."
A lot of people in the business world are dead inside
You insensitive clod!
What about my Creative Zen?
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
must be quite an experience
Each soundproof cabin will contain a sofa that converts into a double bed, a pull down desk, closet space, adjustable mood lighting, a shower, wireless Internet, an iPod connection and a flat-screen TV
That's huge compared to what they have in Japan. In Japan, they have what are called capsule hotels", which is basically like the sleeping tubes in the movie the 5th element.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
To Case:
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
"It's not like I'm using," Case heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of the Chat. "It's like my body's developed this massive drug deficiency." It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke. The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
What's an Ipod connection? And what does it do? Say it's to enable people to fill up their mp3 player with new music, why isn't it just a USB port? If it's so you can hear your music, why isn't just a jack stick?
This smells like some smart marketing suit yelling out requirements "we need this...and that!... and an Ipod connection!"
"Sound proof and bookable for 4 hour periods...."
Sounds like the perfect resource for hookers and hitmen!
Am I the only one who could care less how weird and uncomfortable these things are so long as it's cool and futuristic looking? I am such a slave to my geekness.
I know a certain count from the Balkans that won't mind sleeping in this hotel.
Whould you really want to sleep in the same room you just took a dump in?
The concept of a small room does appeal to me though. Assuming it was well designed and contains all the amenities, I'd have no problem with it. But the price must be substantially cheaper than a regular room to reflect the higher number of people they're cramming into the same space.
Given the fact that in general, British public areas are usually filthy in terms of grime and litter, I don't think this is going to work.
How do you know who slept in one of these "pods" before you, or what state you'll find one in ?
Some of the B&B's I've stayed in here have been downright nasty, as well as some hotels and hostels.
We can't even keep our hospitals clean.
Also, everything gets vandalised here, even the windows on the trains have graffiti scratched onto them.
I can imagine "parties" occuring in these pods, where 4 or 5 kids crowd into them, drink themselves into a coma and vomit all over the place - don't think it could happen ? - heh, try living here.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
There really isn't a downside. Anyone who has traveled much knows you rarely spend much time in the room other than sleeping so large rooms are mostly wasted. If you are staying for more than a few days you pick up a traditional room. They are being put in airports for a reason. People don't stay more than a day or two around an airport and traditionally airport hotels are extremely expense. I'd absolutely go that route if I got stuck with an overnight layover. Beats dropping a couple of hundred for a place to crash.
I don't like confined spaces.
Expect to see a lot of these places springing up by 2012. And dont expect them to be cheap.
I'm living near london now but very happy that I will be in another country by 2012. London will be hell on earth. Good luck to the locals!
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
easyHotel got these too. They've even shaped the rooms to Stelios' posture! :-)
-------
Warning: Slashdot may contain traces of nuts.
Capsule - err, Coffin as its British translation seems to go - when the room is 10 square meters? Oh hey - I do live in an apartment of 1 living room, 2 bedrooms, and 3 capsules. Err, coffin sized bed rooms. And my room (shared) is a coffin size too? If that was a news of opening finally a real Japanese sized capsule hotel, it would score as geek news, but I don't see its geek newsworthness for the sake of it containing the word iPod.
I could use one of these for a short overnight stay... I wouldn't want it for longer stays... As this is intended to airport hotels, I would say it is a good fit.
I think that this would hit a great niche for me in terms of non-business travel if they had one of these in London proper (or any other city I'd like to visit, London being a personal favorite). I *don't* need a really fluffy hotel room, but the last "quaint" place I stayed in was not that nice. So somewhere between "super-budget" and "luxury" I could see people going for a small room but with the right features. Something $100/night in London that didn't suck would probably go over very well.
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
..is that the hotels are automated
my password really is 'stinkypants'
"...business travelers crammed into 10-square-meter cabins."
They make it seem like 10 square metres is very little. I live in a 1-room, 15 square metre apartment, and I have plenty of space for all my furniture. There's even enough room for a small kitchen in the corner.
Sheesh... Lousy pampered business-men...
*Grumble, grumble*
Eat the rich.
"Costing roughly 70 dollars a night (but also bookable for four-hour periods), the rooms are aimed at passengers waiting for connections or those who want to sleep or work before a meeting." ...or lonely business men wanting somewhere to entertain the "ladies".
IMHO the term "You insensitive clod!" starts to deserve its own acronym.
"YIC": Does anyone know about conflict with an existing one?
Having these hotels in hub airports would probably make them pretty popular with those who miss connections or have cancelled flights. This fall, I was going through Detroit, and they cancelled my connection with the next one in 8 hrs. Exhausted, and with a toddler in tow (who desperately needed a nap), I gladly plunked down $220 for 7 hrs in a Westin (most expensive nap ever). I would have loved to have had a $70 capsule hotel as an option.
Shit moderation, this is not a troll, these are sad facts of life on the Island of Britannia!
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Tfa mentions that the lack of natural light is perceived as a problem. Most of the time when you are in a hotel room, it's dark outside. What you get is the light from surrounding buildings. Sometimes the view out the window is seriously ugly.
Natural light could be provided by a light pipe; a quick google shows that those are commercially available. A decent sized lcd monitor covered with sheers would give you the same effect as a window.
I've travelled a lot and 90% of the time, the view out my hotel room window hasn't been that great. Most of the time I'm in the room with the curtains closed and the window doesn't matter anyway.
The lack of natural light shouldn't be a big deal.
"Norman Bates' Mother: And then what? After supper? Music? Whispers?"
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I do
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
See how other companies are strengthening the dominance of ipods in the market by supporting these non-standard ports? Pretty soon, most people would give up their current player of choice and swing towards the ipod, because of it's exclusive support by other manufacturers.
What some engineers need to do, is creat a standard port that companies can implement in their players. Sorta like Vesa, and that way the choice of portable players are back in the hands of the consumer.
You can (usually) get a "normal" hotel in London from one of the budget chains for around the $70 mark (depending on area). The last time I checked "easyHotel" (http://www.easyhotel.com/), who pioneered the reduced-cost hotel concept, their prices were typically higher (up to $80 per night) than I could get in a number of conventional hotels that offered more space and a higher level of service. Accor (the French chain that operates Motel 6, Ibis, Novotel et al) already operates the Formule 1 brand (http://www.hotelformule1.com/) which provides automated checkin and basic rooms from around $50 in (the environs of) London and don't vary their prices according to demand the way easyHotel do.
The only thing that seems to distinguish the Yotel is "designer" styling - and it will be interesting to see how this stands up to the wear and tear of a small space with high occupancy levels...
Still, if they manage to deliver a hotel which meets the three basic requirements of a hotel - cleanliness, a working shower and a room quiet enough to sleep in - they'll be doing better than the majority of establishments out there!
Abso-frickin-lutely. Had a layover in Honolulu and the next flight out to Guam was eight --eight!--hours away. I was worn out traveling from Miami - Houston - Hawaii and I was NOT keen to see more tropical weather, being from Miami, thankyouverymuch. Any place to lie in, not those plastic chairs waiting in the airport.
The airport had a box like this, with a bed and shower, maybe not as luxurious but with short term rates, but GOD I just HAD TO HAVE IT. It was perfect, and I thought, well, why don't we have more of these?
THey were thoroughly cleaned after use; I can imagine they could do the same in London.
I would like to see flights with capsules.
Since I'm over 2m tall, the seats are extremely uncomfortable.
If I could opt for a coffin and an unfolded nap, I would almost certainly do so.
Then weight distribution would be easy for the airlines.
Of course there's safety issues, "someone please think of the children."
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
... though the price is a little high for what you get.
:)
I recently took a motorcycling vacation through the UK, and honestly finding places to stay was a little tougher than it is in the US. Here you can be sure of finding a budget hotel easily and quickly. Most of the time, to find somewhere to stay in the UK you've got to be either (a) near a big city or (b) near a tourist trap. That becomes a problem because typically the hotels are more expensive in these areas.
Had this sort of thing been available, then the two nights I spent in London out of my two weeks I probably would have stayed there. It seems like just the sort of thing I needed; small, convenient and the price is not too high. My experience of hotels in England seems typically much higher than I'm used to. While traveling (not for business) I'm usually more than happy with a $40 per night Red Roof Inn.
Having said that, I did end up staying at a hostel in Cardiff that was a lot cheaper than this (and almost stayed at a hostel in Brighton except for finding a great deal on a hotel room down the street). If you don't mind the "communal living" stuff and can live with the odor of weed in the lounge then this is a great option, especially if you're touring on a motorbike or just generally trying to keep the budget low.
Back on topic, I would definitely use hotels like this when traveling. Usually all I need is a single night, and I don't intend on spending a huge amount of time in the room itself. I find the wireless Internet and stuff a little useless though... if this is really a room just to sleep and then go do stuff then why do you need a reason to stick around the little room?? When I was touring, if I wanted to use the Internet I normally didn't use the Hotel Internet connection and instead found a nearby Internet cafe. More sociable, and usually pretty cheap. Plus, I got some good (and bad) tea and coffee out of it
C'mon, doesn't this sound a little dodgy to anyone else?
Do they warm-bunk them like in submarines?
As the cities become more and more crowded, dont be suprised if long term apartments start looking like this.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In my days, our Transformers only changed into one thing and back. And we liked it that way!
At least on of the Yo! Sushi! outlets in London (off Oxford Circus) has an iPod dock on the table and a private speaker. Maybe this guy REALLY likes iPods (as do I!).
Has anyone else noticed these look a lot like prefabricated cruise ship cabins? They too run about 3 meters on a side and contain a functional, if spartan, bathroom. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if these are just a bunch of prefab cubes stuck in a building by crane, then plastered in. At least they don't automatically come with a roommate, like crew quarters...
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Accor Hotels opened the budget Formule 1 chain with its mini rooms back in 1985. Now when they have these things in the obesity-laden, everything-has-to-be-supersized United States, get back to us.
If you think of Count Drakula, then you need a better world map. Romania is not on the Balkan peninsula. (And no, I am not Romanian either.)
I'd love to see airports, train stations, and maybe a few other places have short term rentable units even smaller.
Imagine a space 9 feet long, 3 feet high, and 3 feet deep. At one end, a 2 foot wide by 2 foot deep table on which could be placed a carry on bag. An electrical outlet could be available for charging laptops and such. The other 7 feet in length (2.13 meters) would be a padded, easily cleanable surface. Set in the wall at the back would be two one time use cleaning rags, a one time use pillow, and a cheap sheet & blanket. Well filtered airflow with a CO and CO2 alarm built in would be a requirement of course.
You put in a credit card, it snaps a picture of the unit and then it opens. You are agreeing to a contract that says:
1. If its not clean, you have 1 minute to decide that and reject the unit.
2. You agree to use it for $x/hour.
3. You agree to a $50 fee if you do not leave it clean.
Assuming it opens, and is clean, you take the first of the two cleaning rags and wipe it down. Toss the rag, and pull out the sheet and blanket, the one time pillow and you've got a bed. Plug in the laptop to charge, pull the door closed behind you and sleep. Both you and the laptop get a couple of hours rest and recharging.
On leaving, you toss the sheets and pillow away, wipe down the bed with the other rag, take your stuff and leave. When you close the door another picture is taken of the "finished" state of the unit in case you've left a mess. A short cleaning cycle runs using fresh air, UV light, and who knows what else. The unit is ready for the next person.
Given most of these places have enough height to them, you could easily stack two.
In an airport, having them in the secure part of the terminal combined with good strong wall makes the security threat pretty minimal.
There are many times in airports I'd have been willing to pay $30 or more for a few hours that way.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
...is a sofa like that!
I believe that the promoters have this trade very much in mind, though don't expect them to admit it. Many escorts (upmarket) and street girls (downmarket) in the UK do not have a place to go and rely on using hotels. This adds about 50-100 GBP to the punter's cost, and the punter also has the embarassment of dealing with a hotel receptionist knows what's going on (probably seen the girl many times before). These things will be a Godsend to the trade.
I stayed in one of the tiny rooms in the Transfer Hotel in Copenhagen Airport--they rent in 2 hour blocks during the day. Soundproofing is the key that makes it work.
...while US English seems to use "could care less".
US English
Is there such a thing?
KFG
Your haiku skills need practice, grasshoppah. Fixt: iPod connection? I have a Creative Zen, Insensitive clod!
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I really need to learn to use tags in my posts here.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
From the FAQ:
Is there a laundrette or facilities for washing clothes? No
Is there a telephone available in the room / hotel? No
Can I store my bicycle within the hotel? No
Can I buy alchohol at the hotel? No
Is there a mini-bar in the room? No
Is there a gym in the hotel? No
Is there a swimming pool in the hotel? No
This has David Spade written all over it.
Accor [...] already operates the Formule 1 brand (http://www.hotelformule1.com/)
Does it smell like a hotel for mules?
did end up staying at a hostel in Cardiff that was a lot cheaper than this
Will this film make people afraid to stay in hostels?
I am an architect and i can easily say that these coffin rooms aren't out of the limits. Sure, ten square-meter rooms are definitely pushing the limits, but normally, (even though there's no limit on luxury rooms), hotel rooms don't usually measure more than 20-25 square meters. 12-16 square meters rooms are not uncommon. in Europe, people who live with their families or roommates live in apartments which are around 25-35 square meters per person. (in urban areas of course, rural areas are a whole different deal). There are also studios for one which can be as small as 30 square meters (for everything you need, bathroom, kitchen, a bedroom and a living room.) 10 square meters are a far stretch, but since you won't be "living" there, it'd be okay. Geometry of this 10 square meter room is probably 2.2 x 4.5 or something like 2.40 x 4.15. In many building codes, you can't build a bedroom narrower than 2.4 meters. A 3.3 x 3 room is also possible but not likely due to its square-like dimensions which is not really suitable for a hotel room. The more disturbing thing about these rooms are the fact that they don't have natural light. IMHO, that's a no-go. Lack of natural light (not to mention lack of natural air-flow) in bedrooms are almost always unacceptable barring extreme circumstances. And these circumstances here being squeezing more bucks out of a cheap concrete box, i'd say it's not cool at all. These rooms should be *really* cheap to match their "coffin factor". The real important deal in this article is that this hotel is totally automated, which nullifies A LOT of costs such as staff wages. After all, in the long run building costs are trivial next to cost of running a hotel.
Now, if they could just do this for airplane seating. Every time I cram into one of those godawfully uncomfortable things, I think, for the 50 (?) cubic feet I'm getting, why can't I lie down in it? (Sort of like in The Fifth Element.) That'd be way more comfortable.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Yeah, I don't understand why nobody seems to sell capsule flights, particularly for long hauls. You could fit 6 capsules in the space of 8-9 seats on a 747, maybe even more. I'd pay 25% extra to get a capsule bed on a transatlantic flight.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
What's wrong with "Capsule hotel" name?
It's not sarcastic so it's un-British.
Costing roughly 70 dollars a night (but also bookable for four-hour periods)
Four-hours? How about 15 minutes and I promise to clean up after myself when I'm done!
(rim-shot-here)
Coderz 4 Life
I've traveled quite a bit and slept in some pretty shitty places. In the end the only thing that's relevant about a hotel room is whether the bed and shower are clean enough (some nasty surprises I've had in expensive hotels: somebody else's pubic hair in the bed, small bloodstains on the towels, a 'used' toilet, 'dubious' stains on the sheets).
I don't mind if the room is small, as long as my bag and I fit in to it and as long as it is clean. Hotels are mostly about providing a false sense of luxury at a low cost for people who don't get around very much. If you travel a lot, you're no longer impressed by it. Just like air travel had a reality check over the past few years, hotels will have a similar reality check. You can still fly business class if you want to but unless you are an overpaid executive, you'll probably fly economy class and pay for your drinks & meals nowadays (short flights anyway). Similarly, do you really need a minibar, a spacious lobby and an outrageous breakfast buffet? Sure it's nice to have but will you pay for it if the alternative is 50 dollars cheaper and gets you a good enough bed in a small but quiet room? Right now you don't have much choice.
When traveling privately, I always seem to find these inexpensive nice places and when traveling for work the room price is two or three times as high.
Jilles
For some reason, the 3rd class stateroom in Starship Titanic comes to mind.
HTML tags...?
Or you could choose "Plain Old Text",
you ignorant clod.
And mandate that they be shipped luggage class? Sharing the last leg of a 28 hour flight from the company's newest outsourcing office in Derkderkistan with 3 screaming infants and 6 hyper children is not my idea of a good time. Especially if the company doesn't spring for business class for those flights due to the latest round of cost cutting. I'd take out my frustrations with a new TSA rule: If they can't do long division, they fly in cargo. Admittedly in the USA, that'd include a number of college age and older people as well...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Hate to pick nits, but you only just add an apostrophe to plural nouns that end in s. Singular words that end in s you still add 's.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostrophe_(mark)
Debate over the possessive form of words ending in s
* While it is commonly perceived that words ending in s simply gain an apostrophe in their possessive form (Mr. Jones' sock garters), the University of Delaware provides these guidelines [2]:
o To form the possessive of a plural noun ending in "s" simply add an apostrophe.
+ dogs' bones
+ boys' bicycles
o To form the possessive of a singular noun that ends in an "s" sound, be guided by the way the word is pronounced. If a new syllable is formed in the pronunciation of the possessive, add an apostrophe plus "s."
+ boss's office
+ witness's memory
* A more prescriptivist approach is to add an s to single syllable words (Mr. Jones's sock garters), and omit them from multi-syllable words (witness' memory).
Oh, and you'll have to be an officer.
rj
When I read the headline my first thought was that Britain had run out of room in their cemetaries and was solving the problem with large buildings in which to store occupied coffins. Obviously a bit misleading. The Japanese have a better, less morbid name: capsule hotels.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Yotel CEO Gerard Greene described the new creations as "a wake-up call for the hotel industry." "We have been bold enough to take steps than no other has taken before, allowing us to offer luxury accommodation at an affordable price," he said.
These have been tried in the States already, and failed miserably. Not quite the same concept - hourly rates only - but had the same target market. Maybe the previous entrepreneurs were a little ahead of their time.
Already saw this on that rival web site - no digg!
It's attitudes like this that would make glad to have my British citizenship ripped up and see me thrown on the next plane out of the country. I'm not joking. In fact, I'm begging for it. Can't wait until I've got enough money together so I can get out before I grow old waiting.
No, I refuse to have my beloved language associated with 'color' and 'sox'. There does appear to be a North American language rooted in English but it has long since become seperated from the tongue of Her Brittanic Majesty.
Only thing I can think that would be a problem... ventilation. For me, I'm a girl on the ground floor so I never leave the window open at night cus I'm scared, but I tell you a small room with no decent ventilation for a few hours... you need some good air freshner :)
I got stuck on the last train ride to Osaka from Tokyo on a recent stay in Japan. Bad planning on my part, but part of the problem is that I only speak very, very basic Japanese (e.g. "Where is the bathroom?"). It was about 1:00am and all the trains had stopped, and the next one left the station at 6:00am. I didn't have the money to take a cab to an expensive hotel and then cab back to the station in the morning, nor did I really speak enough Japanese to ask where the closest cheap hotel was (and ryokans, while they can be cheap, rarely have all-night entry), but I did have enough cash to pay for the capsule hotel located right there in the station. I can't read enough Japanese to be able to tell from the signage if a capsule hotel caters to only men, or to men and women both. Being a woman, I poked my head inside to ask if they accomodated women and if there was a capsule free, and I basically got yelled out of the establishment. I hadn't even cleared the front entrance! They yelled me out of the place despite the fact that I am obviously gaijin (blond-haired and blue-eyed), and equally as obviously didn't speak much of the language, so it was pretty darn likely that I'd just made a mistake. For a culture that is known worldwide for its politeness, these people were damned rude!
Funny, though, it didn't seem to bother them that I had to camp out in the train station for the night, not twenty feet from the doorway of their establishment. That being said, a) I wasn't the only one to do it (there were a couple of obviously not homeless college-aged guys who did the same thing), and b) that train station was one of the safest places in a city where I have been late at night. (I'm comparing it to major Canadian cities, and one particular small town with a municipal campground fairly close to what passes for the downtown core, where I, as a young girl with the rest of my Girl Guide troupe, were terrorized by drunks who pissed on and sliced up our tents.)
Back to the point, here, though... Basically, any room that is comfortable, affordable, and doesn't discriminate against female customers is good in my books. From personal experience, women won't enjoy the capsule hotel experience as much as they probably will the Yotel experience.
Ah, but your examples are about spelling. I'm questioning the language.
KFG
Each soundproof cabin will contain a sofa that converts into a double bed, a pull down desk, closet space, adjustable mood lighting, a shower, wireless Internet, an iPod connection and a flat-screen TV.
My sofa converts into a state-of-the-art pirate fortress.
A capsule hotel in Tokyo runs say 4000-5000 yen while a business hotel is say 6500-8500 and ordinary hotels then above 10,000 yen per night. The best capsule I've seen in Tokyo is VIVI in Roppongi's ROI building, for around 4000 yen, because it includes a common area with reclining chairs and large TVs, ion water, and relatively luxurious accomodations. For a little less you can sleep on shelves separated by curtains but that sucks. I've often used capsules when working past midnight when the trains stop since it costs 8000 yen to get home by cab. Another in Ebisu is 4400 yen I believe and is a standard clean capsule. (Think a quiet room with plastic molded bunk beds but when you go in your honeycomb cell and close the bamboo blinds over the end you scoot in horizontally, turn on the fan and light, and can watch a little tv. Minimal and expensive for what it is. The poster mentions a nice tiny hotel room that sounds more like a smallish Japanese "business hotel" size room without the window you normally get. This is probably like what women can rent in coed capsules (women are not allowed in the capsule side but get private rooms of their own), any women who has tried one please post.