In 1962, the Imperial Inn in Chicago opened a “frustration room.” It was a room that people could rent to vent their frustrations. They were supplied with dishes, lamps, furniture, and light bulbs, and they were invited to hurl these against the wall of the room. On the wall were pictures of policemen and politicians, among other things. The hotel manager noted, “there is a chance that someone might get carried away, and unwind so far that he needs to wind himself back up again. So as a special precaution we have a straight jacket available for anybody who goes berserk.”
The Hotel Bellora in Gothenberg, Sweden has introduced what it calls the 'check out suite'. The price of staying in this room is proportional to how much time you spend online while there. The cost rises the more you use the Internet. Also, a lamp in the room changes color from white to red as your Internet usage increases. If the lamp changes fully to red, you've got to pay full price for the room.
The goal is to encourage occupants of the room to have more real-world interactions with people. But if so, why limit it to Internet usage? What about docking them for time spent watching TV as well?
Lyndon Sanders opened the Non-Smokers Inn in 1981 in Dallas. At the time, it was the first exclusively non-smoking hotel in America. Actually it may have been the first to offer any rooms exclusively for non-smokers, period. I'm not sure. But as it turned out, he anticipated the non-smoking trend too well. From cnn.com:
In a business sense, he was ahead of his time -- too far ahead. The Non-Smokers Inn did well at first, but by 1991 Sanders had to turn the hotel over to new management, which changed the name to the Classic Motor Inn, and allowed 22 of the 135 rooms to welcome smokers.
It wasn't that the world had turned its back on his idea -- it was that the world had embraced it too thoroughly. Major hotels had started putting in nonsmoking floors, and advertising the fact; people who didn't smoke suddenly had no trouble finding a clean, fresh-smelling room. The Non-Smokers Inn, struggling for business, had to become something else and let smokers in, because the nonsmokers no longer had to look so hard for what they desired.
Okay, so your establishment is NOT the Bates Motel. But do you even want to remind your customers of the horrible things that can happen in anonymous hotel rooms?
This house takes its shape from the human digestive system. While CasAnus is anatomically correct, the last part has been inflated to humongous size. CasAnus is made to function as a hotel, including a bed and a bathroom.
If you stayed there, you could say "This place is crap," and not necessarily mean it in a pejorative sense.
Also by van Lieshout, along similar lines, is the BarRectum (aka Asshole Bar):
The bar takes its shape from the human digestive system: starting with the tongue, continuing to the stomach, moving through the small and the large intestines and exiting through the anus. While BarRectum is anatomically correct, the last part of the large intestine has been inflated to a humongous size to hold as many drinking customers at the bar as possible. The anus itself is part of a large door that doubles as an emergency exit.
The concept behind the Rough Luxe Hotel in London seems to be that the rooms look like crap (unfinished walls, peeling paint), but you pay a lot to stay there because they've rebranded crap as "rough luxury". How much do you pay? £250 a night during regular season, which is about $380.
Our look is a mix of old and new, furniture and art; combining colours and beautiful fabrics with cheap materials and existing distressed original walls. Cheap materials are treated as precious items and preserved for their beauty and memory of the site.
Most rooms don't have a TV because "as you are in one of the most exciting capital cities in the world, you probably wouldn't need one." Oh, and you might have to share a bathroom. My favorite touch: a sign in one of the rooms declares "This is Shit".
For that kind of money I'd be happy to let someone stay in my "rough luxury" garage. I'd even put out a sleeping bag for them.
Posted By: Alex - Mon Dec 01, 2008 -
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Category: Hotels
Paul Di Filippo
Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1.