Hotel turns rooms into pop-up restaurants

A Swedish hotel has repurposed its rooms as pop-up restaurants in order to allow for socially-distanced dining

Spotted: The coronavirus pandemic has had a severe negative effect on the hospitality industry, as hotels and restaurants have been effectively shut to customers for an extended period. As both businesses consider how they can resume business safely, one hotel operator has come up with a unique idea.

Swedish hotel, Stadt, in Lidkoping, has opened up their rooms as private dining spaces, allowing people to go out to eat while still maintaining social distancing from other diners. The idea is that instead of getting a table in a restaurant, diners are given an entire room with a table. Orders can be placed by phone, so diners never have to leave the room.

The rooms will accommodate between 2 and 12 people, and the menu offers two dishes for an affordable price of 298 SEK (around £25). Each sitting lasts for two and a half hours, but diners who have had too much wine with their meal can opt to stay overnight for an additional fee.

According to the organiser of the pop-up hotel restaurant, Klas Tryborn, “We have nothing to lose, so now you have the chance to do something completely new. I hope we can inspire others to find similar solutions. This can also be done in Stockholm or Borås. It is now that we should be creative and work together.”

While renting rooms by the hour is nothing new, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a variety of innovative ideas for repurposing existing spaces. Some of the ideas covered recently by Springwise include using hotel rooms as social-distancing workspaces and a flexible micro-apartment used for self-isolation.

Explore more: Travel & Tourism Innovations | COVID-19 Innovations