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A hotel in a box
While no two rooms are designed the same — they are outfitted in images of local attractions — each room has a window view. Eschewing the generic look of most chain hotels, Qbic allows guests to change the color and theme of their room with a touch of the finger on an LED screen. "If you want a pink room or blue sky or orange, you can change the mood of the room," says Hofman. Moreover, she says, "the Cubi can be placed and hooked up within a few hours. Which means Qbic is a near-instant hotel." (See BusinessWeek.com, 2/9/07, "Pop-Up Stores: All the Rage").
According to Hofman, to date the average stay is 1.4 days, with a few guests arranging month-long visits. Qbic plans to open a second location in Maastricht at the end of the year and a third in Antwerp in 2008. Next up, the company is hoping to expand to Barcelona, Copenhagen, London, and Milan. Hofman says the company is in discussions to possibly extend Qbic to American cities as well as a franchise concept.
DIY digs
Qbic may be a new wrinkle in what is becoming known as the "pod hotel" movement. While pod hotels are not new in some Asian countries including Japan, where such tiny hotels have been around for at least 20 years, there seem to be more of them sprouting up in large capital cities in the West. Greek shipping heir and mogul in his own right Stelios Haji-Ioannou launched easyHotel in England, part of his growing budget empire that started with the no-frills easyJet airline and has grown to include Internet cafes, rental cars, and a cruise ship line. Recently the British YO! Sushi restaurant chain opened a prototype pod hotel in Heathrow Airport called Yotel.
"What you see happening is a combination of things," says Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst at Forrester Research in San Francisco. "There is the high cost of real estate and limited availability, and so companies are putting hotels in unconventional locations. And people are willing to forgo certain amenities and space in order to stay in a city center at a reasonable cost."
What distinguishes Qbic — at least for now — is its ability to offer both high style and low cost in a self-service environment. "Qbic is quite stylish and slick," says Harteveldt. "I think that it appeals to someone who appreciates style after being in an airplane cabin that is devoid of style." But he says that using technology as a proxy for human service works only if the instructions are clear and easy, and if customer expectations meet the hotel's promises. "We are an increasingly DIY global society, whether that means checking into a hotel or renovating a house."
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