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With barebones airliners popping up all over Europe in the last two decades, I wonder if the idea has been applied to lodging yet. Imagine a hotel stripped to its barest, with every luxury costing extra. '
It would be named "Motel 4", and it would advertise $4 / night, no matter what.
For $4 / night, you get a tiny room with a fold-down mattress, a faucet, a toilet, a sheet, a pillow, and a shelf to put your stuff on. There would be complimentary USB charging of phones, but plugging things in costs $1 / kWh.
At $4 / night, the showers are down the hall, and cost $5 for a 5-minute wash and 5 minutes after that to dress. Rooms with en-suite showers begin at $24 / night but are showers are still limited to 15 minutes per day.
There would be a 19" SD TV in all rooms, but by default the only thing you can watch are promotions for pay-per-view movies and Motel 4 commercials. Luckily, you are able to watch network TV and a limited selection of basic cable channels for $4 / hour or $10 / day. ESPN is available for another $5 / day. Movies cost between $10 and $16.
Wireless internet is free, but it's limited to just above dial-up speeds. To unlock the full speed costs $4 / hour or $10 / day.
Cleaning service is an additional $4 / day.
Booking a room carries a $4 credit card processing / transaction fee. You can also pay up-front in cash, but that requires a $4 till fee or a $4 credit card processing fee unless you use a Motel 4 Pre-Paid Visa.
Parking is a necessity as most of the hotels would be run out of abandoned malls, motels, and big-box stores. However, that would carry an additional fee, usually $10 / night.
Sounds close to Tune Hotels, but they go for a lot more than $4 equivalent in their UK properties. (Cheapest I saw was a £15 base promo rate- opening special for their Newcastle property, and even that appears effectively sold out now.)
With barebones airliners popping up all over Europe in the last two decades, I wonder if the idea has been applied to lodging yet. Imagine a hotel stripped to its barest, with every luxury costing extra. '
It would be named "Motel 4", and it would advertise $4 / night, no matter what.
For $4 / night, you get a tiny room with a fold-down mattress, a faucet, a toilet, a sheet, a pillow, and a shelf to put your stuff on. There would be complimentary USB charging of phones, but plugging things in costs $1 / kWh.
At $4 / night, the showers are down the hall, and cost $5 for a 5-minute wash and 5 minutes after that to dress. Rooms with en-suite showers begin at $24 / night but are showers are still limited to 15 minutes per day.
There would be a 19" SD TV in all rooms, but by default the only thing you can watch are promotions for pay-per-view movies and Motel 4 commercials. Luckily, you are able to watch network TV and a limited selection of basic cable channels for $4 / hour or $10 / day. ESPN is available for another $5 / day. Movies cost between $10 and $16.
Wireless internet is free, but it's limited to just above dial-up speeds. To unlock the full speed costs $4 / hour or $10 / day.
Cleaning service is an additional $4 / day.
Booking a room carries a $4 credit card processing / transaction fee. You can also pay up-front in cash, but that requires a $4 till fee or a $4 credit card processing fee unless you use a Motel 4 Pre-Paid Visa.
Parking is a necessity as most of the hotels would be run out of abandoned malls, motels, and big-box stores. However, that would carry an additional fee, usually $10 / night.
What do you think of my proposal?
I think what would end up being spent for nothing (at your place) I could spend for something at a place that is nice and not a cheap flop house.
I think this proposal is an IDEAL way to lose a lot of money.
People who stay at a $4 hotel will TREAT IT like a $4 hotel. I think you would have better luck with Japan's capsule hotels. But I have a feeling the capsule hotel idea only works in Japan, which is far and away the most conspicuously clean place on Earth.
Your competition would be couchsurfing.com (free), hostels ($15 or so in the US) and airbnb.com (about $30 in cities). Are you better than them, for the money?
You would not get any female travelers if your abandoned malls didn't have a lot of security.
I think the skepticism here is because of jealousy of not coming up with this idea.
Things can be made secure so they are hard or virtually impossible to break.
Not a chance of jealously here and things cannot be made that secure unless you want to go to jail which you pretty much get the same thing, sink, toity, a thing that is supposed to be a bed, a sheet, a pillow and you get to stay there for free and they feed you, sort of.
I'm sure Tune, who does a variation of your idea throughout SE Asia and in parts of the UK and Australia, has run the numbers to see what their price point would have to be for the concept to work in North America, and $4 isn't it for a base room rate. Think more $25-$30 before add-ons and entirely up to relevant building codes for lodging in each state they operate.
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