Pop-up, recyclable and foldable hotel rooms are all familiar concepts to regular Springwise readers, so we couldn't resist sharing yet another application we recently learned about, this time in Malaysia.

Located in Kuala Lumpur, 41 Berangan is an 11-room budget hotel that has made the most of its limited urban space. Nine of the hotel's variously sized rooms are a traditional style situated within the hotel building itself, but two of the rooms—what the hotel calls its courtyard rooms—are constructed from empty, 20-foot shipping containers and form a small courtyard in the empty lot outside. Each features a garden view as a result, as well as an attached bathroom and all the other amenities enjoyed in the rest of the hotel, including air conditioning, internet access, continental breakfast and 24-hour reception. Also in use at the hotel, which just opened in February, are beds of its own design based on recyclable paper pallets.

Given the high cost and limited availability of space in most urban areas, using the flexibility of shipping containers to make the most of what's there is a smart approach. Expect to see this strategy popping up in other parts of the land-crunched world!

Website: www.41berangan.com
Contact: enquiry@41berangan.com

Spotted by: Suki Goh

Back in 2006 we wrote about Belgian tour operator Wasteels' Club Tour program enabling amateurs to plan trips for customers and then earn a commission. Now taking the customer-made theme a step further comes YourTour—which also happens to be Belgian—which lets consumers do it all themselves.

YourTour is a free, personal tour planner that uses a mathematical algorithm to automatically generate fully customized trip plans. Currently focusing on self-drive tours of France, the technology was originally developed for tourism professionals by deciZium, a spinoff company from the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons. Users begin by entering their initial criteria, including the region they'd like to visit, the dates, the type of tour, and the starting and ending points. YourTour then generates a proposed tour including hotels, activities and budget, allowing the user to choose at each step along the way whether to keep or delete any suggestion. deciZium has partnered with Lonely Planet for the suggested activities while Booking.com handles the online hotel reservations once the user is satisfied with their plan. For professional use, YourTour is accessible as a web service in ASP or in XML. More countries will soon be added to its trip-planning capabilities, the company says.

While YourTour undoubtedly offers myriad benefits for DIY consumers, there are clearly also intriguing opportunities for related businesses. A hotel chain, for example, could use the technology to suggest tours built around its own hotels, as the site suggests itself; similarly, a tour operator could let clients create customized tours around its own offerings. Hospitality professionals: time to do some brainstorming! (Related: Trip planner suggests travelling music — Route planner with a wiki twist.)

Website: www.yourtour.com
Contact: www.yourtour.com/TourPlanner/contact/contactus.aspx

It wasn't long ago that we covered the Best Job in the World contest from Australia's Tourism Queensland, and now another popular destination has appeared on our radar for its own promotional innovation. Specifically, Tourism New Zealand has been using a mobile recording studio to collect international visitors' impressions of the region and then upload them to YouTube.

More than 100,000 people have viewed video "raves" posted on Tourism New Zealand's Have Your Say channel on YouTube, which now includes more than 1,400 clips of travellers from Australia, the US, UK, Japan, Germany, Canada and beyond expressing their thoughts and feelings about the country. The organization kicked off the effort in December as part of its "What Do You Say, UK?" campaign, focused on promoting word-of-mouth endorsements of the region among British travellers. Since then, Tourism New Zealand has been working closely with regional tourism groups along the way as it sent a fully equipped mobile recording studio—set up in a converted shipping container on the back of a 10-tonne flatbed truck—to about 40 towns around the nation. Within minutes of filming, each video diary is edited and posted on unpaid media channels, including the Have Your Say site and Tourism New Zealand’s consumer website; visitors can also post the videos directly onto their Facebook profile pages. The recording studio's mobile effort is scheduled to wrap up at the end of this month, after which time Tourism New Zealand will use select raves in future advertising campaigns.

Tourism New Zealand Chief Executive George Hickton explains: "Social media is used by people from all walks of life to connect with people back home while they are travelling. Add to this that word-of-mouth is one of the most effective marketing tools to promote a destination, and the 100,000 views milestone shows that the [effort] has really proven its worth."

Indeed, the effectiveness of traditional mass-media ads is already debatable during the best of times, but during a recession? The cost of a mobile studio for a few weeks could seem like a bargain! ;-)

Website: www.tourismnewzealand.com
Contact: www.tourismnewzealand.com/tourism_info/about-us/contact-us/en/contact-us_home.cfm

Spotted by: Raymond Kollau

This is inflight entertainment that should appeal to all of our entrepreneurial readers: Virgin Atlantic's recently launched PitchTV. As part of Virgin Atlantic's 25th birthday celebrations, Richard Branson announced a new way to support innovative business plans. Entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to the world in video format, uploading the videos to Virgin's website, where the online community can view and rate their idea.

Videos rotate on a monthly basis, and those with the most votes will be shown on Virgin Atlantic's in-flight entertainment service. The aim is for the airline's business passengers to watch the videos, contacting the entrepreneurs behind the ideas that take their fancy to help them develop the idea. Branson claims it's a unique way of giving the world's top business professionals access to fresh ideas and new ventures.

By playing matchmaker, Virgin gains kudos and recognition without shelling out its own cash for new ventures. One pitch will likely prove the exception to that rule, however, as there's a 'special prize' that has yet to be announced. We can't wait to hear which of our readers will be first to appear inflight... (Related: Web channel for three-minute pitches — 'Open-mic nights' for business ideas.)

Website: entrepreneur.virgin.com/pitchtv
Contact: entrepreneur.virgin.com/contact

Spotted by: Raymond Kollau

No sooner did we post our story about Fortnum & Mason's rooftop beekeeping effort in London than one of our readers alerted us to a similar one under way across the ocean. This time, it's atop a Toronto hotel, and the resulting honey is being used to supply the hotel's restaurant kitchen.

Last summer the Fairmont Royal York hotel installed a three-hive apiary 14 stories up above the streets of Toronto. Affectionately named the Honey Moon Suite, The Royal Sweet and The V.I.Bee Suite, the three hives are home to as many queens and their accompanying entourage of more than 10,000 other bees, each of whom forages for nectar in the hotel's decade-old rooftop herb garden and on nearby Toronto Island. The apiary was established in partnership with the Toronto Beekeepers Cooperative and FoodShare, and is a natural extension of the hotel's herb garden, Executive Chef David Garcelon says. It's also part of the hotel's commitment to sustainable hotel management through its Green Partnership program. Garcelon explains: “You can’t find a supplier much closer than your own roof. Our colonies deliver irresistible honey for our guests, while promoting our ecological commitment to bee culture.”

The three hives had produced a total of 378 pounds of honey by last fall and won 2nd place in the Liquid Honey Amber category at the 86th annual Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in November. Response from hotel patrons, meanwhile—who can learn about the source of the hotel's honey via the restaurant menu and also via its monthly audio podcasts—has been so positive that the hotel plans to install three more hives this summer. Similar efforts are also under way at The Fairmont Algonquin in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, and The Fairmont Waterfront in Vancouver.

All of which, of course, is further proof that consumers love things that are (still) made here, wherever that may be. One part hyperlocal production, one part storytelling skill, and you've got a winning recipe for sweet success! ;-)

Website: www.fairmont.com/royalyork
Contact: royalyorkhotel@fairmont.com

Spotted by: Dana