Would you like to book a TEU or FEU?
If this idea takes off, maybe in the future you’ll be asked if you want to book a TEU or FEU instead of a single or double.
Travelodge is using modified shipping containers to build a new hotel in Uxbridge, England. The hotel is being made with 86 high strength steel modules resembling shipping containers, stacked on top of each other and securely bolted together.
The company said when finished, the giant Lego-style structure will look and feel no different to the budget chain’s other 330 hotels in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain.
The company said modules are built in China with bathrooms, plasterboard walls and the electrical points already in place, and shipped to England on — what else – containerships. From port, they are trucked to the construction site.
Once installed at the site, windows are fitted, the modules are decorated and furnished, and then the exterior of the building is cladded. The modules can very in size and may be larger than standard shipping containers.
“Although it may not look like a hotel right now, the containers will be fitted out to include everything we offer in the rooms at a traditionally-built hotel — a comfortable bed, en-suite bathroom, wardrobe, mirror, desk and chair, right down to the plasma TV and free tea and coffee making facilities,' said Paul Harvey, Travelodge’s director of property and development. 'You simply won’t be able to tell the difference.”
The new Uxbridge Travelodge will have 120 rooms and a Bar Cafe. Customers will be able to spend the night in the eight-story modular hotel in West London from June for just '19 (about $37.50) per room, per night. A second, larger hotel is already under construction at Heathrow, scheduled to open at the end of the year.
Harvey said the construction method “could facilitate the creation of hotels on a temporary basis to open in times of peak demand in certain locations — such as festivals or major sporting events. A temporary structure to fit such a need would differ to the design of a permanent hotel but it could be built in as little as 12 weeks and removed quickly at the end of the event when the need is gone.”
A traditional 100-bed hotel costs Travelodge around $9.9 million to build. The company said construction using shipping containers reduces costs by up to 10 percent, and shaves 25 percent off construction time, meaning a 100-bed hotel can be built in 30 weeks, instead of 40.
The budget hotel chain plans to build about 40 hotels each year to 2020, and believes up to half could be constructed using the modular system. ' Chris Dupin
