'Morgue drawers' back in style as pods catch on

IN TRANSIT:IT MAY BE a claustrophobe's worst nightmare, but, like so many 1980s styles, the pod hotel is back in fashion, writes ALANNA GALLAGHER

The idea originated in Japan, to provide a cheap place for hard-working businessmen to get a night’s sleep at a reasonable price if they missed their last train home. But bunking down in a box was a tough experience to sell to the masses, so the concept has been reworked – bigged up, even – to become a bone-fide hotel sector of its own.

It meant making pod hotel rooms a little bigger – but not by much: just under five square metres is the average size, which is just enough for a wide single bed, a shower and a television.

For convenience it’s hard to beat Yotel (yotel.com), which offers pods at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, in London, and Schiphol airport, in Amsterdam. You buy bed time by the hour, then put your head down in slim-fitting rooms that the company says are inspired by BA’s first-class cabins.

Simon Woodroffe, the man behind the company – as well as Yo! Sushi, and former dragon on the BBC version of Dragons’ Den – has created a convenient and cheap place to stay: two people can stay for eight hours overnight, sleeping in twin bunks, for a total of about €100.

In Amsterdam the capsule idea has grown into hotels that offer equally well-designed but slightly larger rooms. Qbic Hotels (qbichotels.com), whose pods feature an “extra-long Hästens bed, Philippe Starck design bathroom elements, LCD TV, high-speed internet, safe and ingenious work-and- dine set”, charges €188 for two people for two nights.

In New York, you couldn’t call the Jane (thejanenyc.com), in the West Village, roomy, but in fashion circles it is white hot.

A two-bunk berth – modelled after a ship’s cabin, authentically narrow and with a small window – costs about €170 for two nights. But you’ll have to use the communal bathrooms at the end of the corridor. If you want a true double, with an en-suite bathroom, you can stump up for a Captain’s Cabin, which, with about five times as much room as a standard cabin, costs about €345 for two nights.

In midtown, the Pod Hotel (thepodhotel.com) also charges pretty steep prices. Doubles cost about €260 for two people for two nights. The same two nights cost from €199 at the SoHo Holiday Inn. Small isn’t always cheaper.

In the Middle East, Dubai airport is about to get minimalist Sleep Boxes, which are also designed to be located in shopping centres, railway stations and even, in warm countries, on the street.

In stark contrast to the supersized rooms being offered by the city’s palatial hotels, these see the capsule hotel return to its compact Japanese roots, as they offer barely three square metres of space, although clever design means they still offer you somewhere to sit and use your laptop.

Back in Japan, capsules have drawn comparisons to morgue drawers. Capsule Inn Akihabara (capsuleinn. com) charges from €32 a night for a space that is two metres long but only a metre wide and a metre high. What they might lack in charm, however, they can make up for with their prices: another of these “coffin hotels”, Asakusa Riverside (asakusa-capsule.jp/english), charges about €25 per person for a night’s stay.

In these confined spaces it’s hard not to hear your fellow sleepers, so earplugs are essential. You will also need plenty of change for the vending machines.

Across the China Sea in Malaysia, Tune Hotels (tunehotels.com), which is about to open in London, to compete with easyHotels, offers a far roomier class of accommodation.

It fuses capsule prices with a budget hotel’s sense of space – in other words, you can fit double beds into its rooms. The downside is that the hotels look as if they took lessons in branding from Ryanair.

Two nights in a room emblazoned with Tune Hotel logos in downtown Kuala Lumpur costs about €30. This excludes tax, refreshments and meals. (Although the company advertises beds for as little as €2.50 a night, these are hard to track down.)

And, as with Ryanair, everything else is extra. Air conditioning – essential in this part of the world – costs about €3.25 for 12 hours or €5 for 24. Wi-Fi costs about €3. Toiletries and towels are another €1.25 per person, plus a refundable deposit of about €2.50.

Ah, it’s enough to make you feel right at home.

• Prices are approximate, based on a two-night stay in June