The Das Park Hotel in Austria has turned drain pipes into upcycled guest rooms for the weary traveller who seeks the simple comforts of home.
The savvy use of public infrastructure is like just home, sweet cylindrical home. You can enter your “suite” through a large door with a personal code, and every room has a skylight, a comfortable bed, and ample storage space.
After the upcycling factor, the next best thing is the Das Park Hotel lets their guests decide what the tab is when they check out. The hotel is “pay as you wish.” That means that guests can leave the Euro amount that they feel is appropriate. Since hotel facility requirements like sanitation are met by using existing infrastructure (toilets and showers are located a hundred metres from the tubes), it reduces costs. The guest contributions go toward hotel cleaning and repairs, and planning.
The Das Park Hotel isn’t the only company to provide salvaged and transformed accommodation in Europe, however. Have you ever felt like sleeping in a wine barrel (at least on purpose)? You can at De Vrouwe van Stavoren Hotel in the Netherlands. This hotel uses wine barrels from Swiss origin that used to contain more than 14,500 bottles of wine.
And it doesn’t end there.
Right across Europe there are environmentally-friendly hotels that focus on low-carbon technologies, like LED lighting, geothermal energy and heat transfer devices. According to the EU Commission, guests staying in eco-friendly hotels leave a carbon footprint 90% smaller than those in traditional hotels. If this isn’t reason enough to sleep in a revamped drainpipe I don’t know what is.
