It’s not exactly a room with a view – but this hotel in Russia could be many travellers’ answer to a good night’s sleep. Located in the centre of Moscow, the Sleepbox Hotel is the first capsule hotel to open in the city.
It features fifty cramped, windowless pods, some of which which can sleep up to three people, and which can be booked for the night, or for a matter of hours.
A night’s accommodation is reported to cost around £32 ($50). Each modular capsule is kitted out with a bed, shelf, lamp, small wardrobe and table, while shared bathrooms are fitted with a shower. Already a hit in Japan, the capsule hotel features a number of identikit rooms measuring around 10 square metres intended to provide cheap and basic overnight accommodation for guests not requiring the services offered by more conventional hotels.
Space-saving hotels in Japan are often located near railway stations and cater for business people or commuters who have missed the last train home. The absence of windows ensures the hotels can be erected in such unlikely sites as underground stations. One capsule hotel in central Tokyo boasts more than 600 pods. Many are used primarily by men and some have separate male and female sleeping quarters.
In the UK, YO! Sushi founder Simon Woodroffe came up with the idea for the YO! hotel chain after seeing the capsule concept in Japan. The first Yotel opened at Gatwick South Terminal in 2007, offering travellers a pay-as-you-go base.
Staffing is kept to a minimum: guests check themselves in, while the purple-coloured pod rooms cover essential needs. Mr Woodroffe boasted of the high quality of the rooms describing them as ‘luxury liner meets The Fifth Element’.
He added that they included flat screen TVs, rotating beds and broadband internet access. Yotel managing director Gerard Greene said: ‘The rooms are very comfortable, highly fitted, with things like the leather you would get in an Aston Martin ‘It is the look of a four or five-star hotel.’ Further Yotels have since opened at Heathrow Terminal 4 and Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, and near Times Square in New York. – Dailymail
