This Hostel is Just Plane Cool

Via Instapundit comes the news of a most unusual place to stay near the Stockholm airport in Sweden: the Jumbo Hostel, which is a renovated, retired 747 jumbo jet featuring 25 rooms and 85 beds:

The Jumbo Hostel is now accepting reservations on its website for stays beginning Jan. 15. Dorm rooms start at 350 Swedish kronor ($45), with deluxe private rooms at $1,350 Kroner ($175). For even more, you can spend the night in the plane's cockpit, which has been converted to a sort of honeymoon suite and is the only room on the plane with its own bathroom and shower.

[...]The Jumbo Hostel might be cheap, but it still comes with some hotel-style extras . The 747's upper deck, which airlines often use as a lounge, will remain such, with the original seats and serving areas intact. The plane's first-class cabin has been turned into a cafe that seats 20 and is open to the public 24 hours a day. Passengers are also free to use the plane's emergency exits to step onto the wing and take a look around.

More info about the hostel can be found on its website (I like some of the little touches: how they've kept one of the overhead bins in each room for storage space, how they're planning to hang one of the plane's tires from the back to be used as a swing).

A Guardian reporter from the U.K. got to check it out in advance of the opening and posts this report:



(And how weird is it to hear a Guardian reporter with an American accent?)

I don't know when my travels would take me to Sweden, but I would definitely check out a place like this--assuming, as noted in the video, that I could find the right two people for the, umm, unusual sleeping arrangements ("one who will sleep with you, the other who will presumably promise not to watch." LOL!). But owner Oscar Diös hopes to franchise the concept, so maybe it'll make it to these shores; as the article points out, given the state of the airline industry, there may be plenty of retired planes for the asking.