21 Jun The Latest Thing: Pop-Up Hotels

There is a saying in advertising that if you can find a flat surface an ad can go there. Hence bathroom stall ads, covering the sides and windows of buses with ads, etc. We’re seeing everything temporary these days – pop up stores, restaurants, flash sales online and so on. With hotel rooms, it appears, if you have a piece of ground, plop down a hotel room. Or a bunch. Whether it’s the Olympics or a music festival, often places to sleep are hard to find, limited and/or expensive. So arrives good old human ingenuity turning things like shipping containers into small but well-appointed hotel rooms, complete with bathrooms, showers and flat screen TVs. They move them wherever needed and charge hundreds of dollars a night to rent. Others make tents all fancy with real beds and the like.

I recently stayed in a “Pod” hotel near my law office in NYC. The room barely fit the queen size bed and a small desk, plus a small but cool bathroom with a waterfall shower. But the price was right, it was very clean and the place was kind of hip with a cool bar downstairs and a rooftop as well. But all I needed was a bed and shower so it worked! Hearing of the pop-up hotel idea, my friend suggested sticking one in his driveway to house his in-laws!