Sleeping boxes vs traditional dorms
The Ideal Hostel
I love hostel life, but hate sleeping in dorms. I still haven't seen any hostels with sleeping boxes, where each guest sleep in a separate box where (s)he can lock there door. The advantages would be:
- Less noise
- No smell from other guests
- No lights turned on in middle of the night
- No risk of sexual harassment which means no need for separate women dorms
- Guests can safely store stuff, no risk of the locker key to get stolen
- Possibility for sex, so if two guests hook up, they can go to one's sleeping box instead of doing it in common areas or the toilet
There could also be some couple boxes for couples who want to travel cheap and avoid private rooms
Why is this not more common in hostels? I would love this option, and would even pay sligthly more than the price of a normal dorm bed.
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6 years
There are lots of hostels that use pod-style beds, where you enter from the end instead of the side. These are similar to the Japanese sleeping capsules.
Example: OPENING of the first Pod Hostel in South East Asia. Please support us. Many thanks!
I can't recall off the top of my head seeing any that have locking doors in hostels, although I have seen things like that in airports. (ex. NapCabs, Sleepbox)
I'm pretty sure these units don't come cheap. While they could earn their money back in a high-traffic, high turnover area like an airport or train station, in a hostel I'm not sure they would be cost effective. (See the comments in this thread: *Must read* Innovative hostel concept)
I would love this option, and would even pay sligthly more than the price of a normal dorm bed.
This is probably the reason that you don't see more of these in hostels. Catering to guests who want privacy but aren't willing to pay for it isn't good business. Anyone who doesn't own their building has rent or mortgage to pay, and it is probably a significant cost. A lot of hostel owners go to great lengths to put together comfortable and well equipped private rooms for people who want more privacy than a dorm allows. They do this to expand their business from the traditional backpacker clientele into the hotel/pension market. These rooms are usually at the standards of local hotels, and they can ask for a comparable price. In fact, guests would need to pay a premium to justify the cost of real estate, cleaning and maintenance. If guests aren't willing to pay the price of a private room and only want to spend a little more than the cost of a dorm bed, then it doesn't make sense for the owner. It makes more sense to set that room up as a dorm and collect a higher revenue for the same space.
That said, sleeping boxes would be a simple way to turn a big warehouse or office space into a semi-personal sleeping zone. It makes more sense for an accommodation provider to implement something like this on a larger scale, rather than installing a few units in addition to traditional dorm rooms. But then you move from "backpackers hostel" to "sleeping capsule hotel" which is a different kind of animal altogether.
Are you thinking of implementing sleeping boxes in your hostel?
6 years
I don't post very often here, but saw this thread highlighted in a newsletter and thought I'd check it out. I can give some perspective here, so why not :)
So, we installed 20 pods in one of our rooms in 91 Loop in Cape Town and it's been a success as far as we are concerned. The room was difficult from the get go due to its shape and we couldn't really get the number of beds in there that we wanted with the existing walls, so we bashed them all out and turned 4 rooms into one, with a large ensuite bathroom (3 or 4 toilets and showers). At that stage we were just a bunch of guys with lots of ideas, and wanted to do something different and the idea of pods somehow was brought up (2 out of 4 founders very pro the pod idea, so pushed it through). Around the same time I saw a post on FB by Stuart from Travelfish who was backpacking around Asia and staying in a pod somewhere. We had already had the idea of pods, but we liked something about the lighting in this one, and one of the founders came up with the idea to tie the lights on the insides of each pod to the keycard for the room. This in my opinion was a huge win - you come into the room, hold up your key card to a scanner and your pod lights up with a nice dim led light. I think anyone that has ever stayed in a hostel knows how annoying it is to be woken by the room lights in the middle of the night, but having stayed in this room myself on a number of occassions, you wouldn't believe it's a 20 person room because of this.
On the issue of doors - we decided against this from a fire point of view and went with curtains instead.
Each pod has it's own 'small' locker on the same keycard you open the room with (will fit a normal work backpack for example). They also have a shelf running almost the whole length of the matrass that fits a laptop for example. Standard for all our beds is reading light and electrical plugs. A suitcase will not fit in the locker, but there is a lot of space free to stash those around. This room is air-conditioned.
Cost - they are custom built by a carpenter. We had the idea and told him, he sketched it out, did a prototype which we loved and assembled them on the spot. The cost wasn't too bad - but definitely more than our normal beds.
Here's some pictures of the pods: https://www.instagram.com/p/BcuPrOtl0B0/ and https://www.instagram.com/p/BcUkOJzlgP2/ which you can contrast with our 'regular' beds here: https://www.instagram.com/p/BbjVCnclPFf/
1 year
Interesting how outside of Japan, the capsule concept is just starting to pick up. They opened the first in the US only a few years ago, while Japan had its first in 1979.
I would keep an open eye on what Japan is doing because their innovation always trickles down to other countries with a gap of a couple of years (or decades). This is a good sum-up of all the different types of capsule hotels: https://www.uniqhotels.com/blog/the-best-capsule-hotels/
I think - as the example of the modern Japanese capsule hotels show - the focus should be on the hotel interior and matching it with the capsules. A lot of times, I see old buildings with futuristic capsules that are ruining the overall design. The two don't go together. So the solution is to design capsules that match the appearance of the building.
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