The San Francisco Chronicle has a report entitled “European hotels offer cheaper, tiny option”. In fact, the operative word for these hotels ought to be tiny.
Somewhat disingenuously classified as “sub-budget” the hotels offer “no window – with a standard size double bed and a washstand, toilet and shower. EasyHotel‘s “small” rooms run from 70 to 90 square feet; that’s about half the size of a low-end cruise cabin”. The Chronicle article notes that each “room comes with clean sheets, pillows and a towel, for the entire length of your stay”. Rather incredibly, almost anything else has a charge attached to it starting from about $18 for if a guest wants linen changed to $8 per day for use of the TV!
Other sub-budget chains offer appear to offer more both in terms of square footage as well as “amenities” including “free” linen changes and TV usage. These include Accor’s Formule 1 and another French chain Premiere Classe.
Easyhotels’ model is unlikely to have much appeal in the US even in conurbations such as New York and San Francisco from a consumer standpoint even if they get past regulatory hurdles stemming from a lack of a window but could find expression in other crowded cities such as Tokyo and Bombay with high real estate prices.