The Papaya Playa Project

As a baby boomer traveler, have you ever desired to attend an event, or visit a very popular tourist destination, only to find that the available hotel rooms are completely booked?

The pop-up hotel movement seeks to provide options for this very situation.

It seems that the pop-up hotel comes in a variety of flavors. Hotel brands have entered very popular tourist destinations to create seasonal hotel space, as well as innovative entrepreneurs creating truly pop-up hotels for festivals and events.

Pop-up Seasonal Hotels

Credited with creating the pop-up hotel idea, Germany’s Design Hotels has entered very popular international beach destinations with the idea of planting a temporary footprint in refurbished space, and shutting down after a prescribed period of time.

The first of these was the Papaya Playa Project.  The project “popped-up” on the beach of Tulum, Mexico where 85 cabanas were refurbished on a 900 meter stretch of virgin beach facing the turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea.

Although originally designed to be only a seasonal offering, where Design Hotels would pack up the hotel and move to a different location, it has evidently proven so successful that they have extended their original closing date.

Design Hotels has also pop-up a hotel on the Island of Mykonos with the San Giorgio Project.

Pop-Up Hotels for Festivals and Events

The SnooeBox Portable Hotel

A common frustration for travelers headed for a large festival or event is that local hotels do not have sufficient hotel rooms to accommodate the large influx of people.

This creates a large problem for festivals and events all over the world.  Perhaps the most notable of these in recent memory is the London 2012 Olympics.

To solve this problem, an innovative company called Snoozebox Portable Hotels has created a modular system where they can pop-up a hotel with 40-400 rooms, nearly anywhere.

President David Coulthard says that he can deliver a turnkey pop-up hotel to an event, and have it fully operational in only 48 hours.

Luxury tent from The Pop-Up Hotel

A different twist on the pop-up hotel theme, a British company called The Pop-up Hotel delivers luxury tents that more resemble those found in the campgrounds of the rich and famous in Africa’s Serengeti National Park.

While Americans might recognize this concept as glamping, The Pop-Up Hotel company can deliver multi-room luxury tents, with sizes ranging from a normal tent size to over 2,000 sq.ft, with all of the bells and whistles you would expect from a world-class luxury hotel.

The call that energizes an entrepreneur is to find a need, and fill it.

And, with the many flavors of pop-up hotels found around the world, it appears that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the hospitality industry.

What do you think of this idea?  Would you stay in a pop-up hotel?

Photo Credits:  all photographs were obtained through the digital media archives of the respective hotel brands.

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