The Pop Up Hotel
Hotels offer temporary accommodation, so why not temporary Hotels? Well, The pop up hotel is a fairly new concept that is being experimented with by a number of the UK’s leading hotel chains. Hotels rooms are in much demand in the United Kingdom and operators and proprietors are forever trying to come up with new ways of increasing room capacity. However, there are a number of challenging issues in the present economic climate relating to the construction of hotel premises. Firstly, the current stock of premises that would lend itself to alteration is not that high, and to construct a hotel from new is very expensive even for the larger operators, One of the main problems with hotels is that once constructed, a certain amount of the costs are fixed and whilst demand for rooms is strong, everything is fine, but, that may change.
At the present moment, trends are pointing to consumers demanding more value for money and it is this sector of the market that is seeing strong growth. Consumers are spending more time online searching for budget hotel accommodation but their expectations of the quality of the room they will actually receive is still quite high. The internet has allowed anyone with a home computer to search various sites, compare prices and pictures of the premises, then make a booking online. This facility has led to some savage price cutting and much refurbishment work carried out on hotel premises. Most consumers will expect the room to have been refurbished recently and to come equipped with refreshment making facilities as well as Flat Screen TVs and access to satellite TV channels.
One of the novel ways of meeting this new demand for accommodation whilst keeping the costs to a minimum has seen the advent of the pop up hotel, This concept sees hotels built of modular construction (The hotel building parts are pre made, steel-frame units, then shipped to the site for construction). This method can help to reduce build times by as much as 50% and can help hoteliers react quickly to hotel room needs. Pop up hotels can be used for conferences, festivals, pop concerts, anywhere, where there is a demand for accommodation at a budget price. One of the added benefits of this designs is that there are semi permanent structures, if demand drops off, they can be deconstructed and moved to a new site.
A number of UK Hotel chains are spear heading the use of pop up hotels, Travel lodge have already opened one in West London and they have plans to open a further forty between now and 2020. The construction method does sound a bit like building with Lego, but as Travel lodge are involved then the concept is definitely worth taking seriously. There is no doubt that although money does not reach as far as it did a few years ago, even at the budget end of the hotel industry consumers are becoming more discerning. Certainly there are large number of persons wishing to visit music festivals that have previously been put off by the rather Spartan living conditions who will relish the opportunity of staying in any kind of modern clean building. Another area where pop up hotels could come in to their own, is in 2012 when accommodation demand in London will hit a high because of the Olympic games. If the United Kingdom is successful in bidding for other major sporting events, such as the world cup, then hoteliers can expect similar demand for good quality budget hotel accommodation and we may see pop up hotels come in to their own.
