What if hotel rooms could go to clients, instead of the other way round? Ahmedabad-based entrepreneur Tanmay Bathwal hopes to do exactly that with his plug-n-play hotel concept, achieved by ingeniously refurbishing discarded 40-foot, shipping containers.
The portable hotel can be shipped to any part of the country to meet demand spikes.
Bathwal got the idea after seeing the shortage of rooms during peak seasons or high-profile events such as the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors Summit (VGGIS). Branded as Beetle Smartotels, he claims his venture can create additional room infrastructure at the remotest of locations within seven days.
Inventory of rooms
Tanmay Bathwal
“We will have an inventory of such ready rooms. Whenever a demand arises, we just need to transport the ready rooms by road or rail and install them with electricity, plumbing and drainage connections. Our rooms are best designed to bridge the gap in availability of temporary but quality accommodation at remote locations, industrial clusters, project sites and high-profile events of corporate and cultural importance,” said Bathwal, Managing Director, Hirise Hospitality Pvt Ltd.
The furnishing and interior of the rooms — three 13x8-feet rooms in a container — matches those of luxury hotel, without giving the occupant a feeling of living in a container, claims Bathwal.
The rooms have three-layered insulation on the top and bottom, making them sound-proof. The insulations also control the temperature inside.
It costs an average of ₹15 lakh to prepare each room, including the interiors and common facilities for room service, restaurant, kitchen, reception and the landscaping. The designing is done by an in-house team and a local architect.
The first such hotel with a 141-room capacity has come up in Mundra on a leased land of about seven acres with an investment of ₹20 crore. The room tariff is likely to be around ₹2,000 to ₹3,000 per day.
Currently, the hotel is spread on ground-floor, but Bathwal claims there can be multi-storey room installations as well. “We normally require about two acres to build a 100-room hotel with all on ground floor. But we can also have multi-storey hotel just like there are multi-storey containers stacked on the ship,” he said.
Bathwal is looking to build 2,000 rooms by June 2018 for which about 15 locations across India are under consideration.
“We plan to set up hotels only in those locations which are developing. There are no plans to enter cities, where the land is already costly,” he said adding that the vision behind making portable hotels is to make remote locations more accommodation-friendly.