Travelodge opens 300-room hotel built in three weeks from containers

The wraps come off the biggest hotel to be constructed from shipping containers this week when the Heathrow Travelodge opens its doors.

Travelodge stacked the containers to assemble a fully-operational 300-room hotel in less than a month.

Today’s Financial Times reports: “The budget hotel chain imported the containers from China – complete with bathrooms, plastering and air conditioning units – then stacked them in just three weeks.”

The steel modules are made by Verbus Systems, a London-based company run by Paul Rollett. It started trading two years ago and is a joint venture between consultants Buro Happold and constructor George & Harding.

Rollett told the FT that he is in talks with more than 10 contractors – though he is looking at global markets such as Canada (where build-time is limited by permafrost). west Africa (where termites eat anything built in timber) and the Middle East.

The Verbus system is based on oversized shipping containers up to 5m across that are so robust that they can be used in a high-rise format.

Not only strong, they also come with the soft touch. Verbus has provided a developer in Liverpool with two modules that came fully finished, with pillows ready fluffed on the bed, says the FT.

Rollett has no enthusiasm for conventional construction methods. He calls it backward and grossly inefficient.

The FT comments: “For medium-sized hotels – those with more than 200 rooms and six stories – Verbus claims its modules are up to 20% cheaper and 50% faster than traditional building systems.”

The Heathrow project took 58 weeks from start to finish, knocking 16 weeks off a conventional-build schedule.

“During one evening, an entire floor of 60 rooms was lifted into place in three hours,” reports the FT.

Financially, the proof of the Verbus pudding is still to come. Turnover ran to just £10m last year and is has yet to make a profit after two years of trading.

Rollett is un-phased, though. “I just can’t understand why buildings aren’t made in factories,” he said.