Hotels that stack up

GO NICHE: WITH AROUND 100 hotels now indirectly controlled by Nama, and many more around the country surplus to tourism requirements…

GO NICHE:WITH AROUND 100 hotels now indirectly controlled by Nama, and many more around the country surplus to tourism requirements, we'll be sorry we didn't take on board a growing trend in hotel construction in other parts of the world – "shipping container" hotels.

The world’s first (pictured below) was built by budget hotel group Travelodge, in Uxbridge near London three years ago. The eight-storey building looks, to the naked eye, like any other budget hotel (that is, not pretty). But neither does it look like it’s made out of 86 steel containers bolted on to one another like Lego bricks.

And even though it really is made entirely of shipping containers, from the inside it feels just the same as any of the chain’s other 330 hotels in the UK, Ireland and Spain.

So successful has it been that Travelodge followed it up with a larger version at Heathrow. Two different sizes of container were used here, creating double rooms that measure 5m by 3m and family rooms of 3.5m by 6m.

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For the budget-conscious traveller such accommodation is a boon. Doubles at the airport hotel are available from €46 per room.

The prices are low because it’s not just the guests that save money. A shipping container hotel is around 10 per cent cheaper than a traditionally built one and build time is 25 per cent shorter. Travelodge now aims to build up to 20 such hotels a year.

But the really big plus with them is that, if a hotel doesn’t work out, it can simply be dismantled, shipped off and relocated to somewhere more promising. If we had only built some of our own properties on the same basis we’d be half way to a solution to our hotel glut.

* travelodge.com