Vancouver city councillors pushing for pod hotels

A pair of Vancouver City Councillors are hoping pod or capsule hotels can help solve a major shortage of hotel rooms in the city’s downtown core.

Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung says she and Councillor Lisa Dominato are bringing a motion to council to look at making it easier for pod hotels to set up in empty commercial spaces.

Kirby-Yung told CityNews the pod hotels don’t offer full rooms, but instead provide sleeping pods for a much lower cost than traditional hotels.

“You get a great bed for the night. You have access to shared amenities, but individual use for showers, water closets, etc. You still have services like the restaurant, but it provides a much more affordable option than we have in Vancouver today.”

Apart from affordability, she says the city would also benefit by being able to make use of empty space in the downtown core.

“We have a higher commercial office vacancy rate than Vancouver has experienced in a long time. Hitting a high of 14 per cent — where it used to be about two per cent,” said Kirby-Yung.

She added that it’s an opportunity for an “adaptive use of space,” saying that several floors of disused office buildings could be converted to a pod hotel.

Kirby-Yung says there’s expected to be a ten-thousand room shortage in Vancouver with several big events coming up in the next few years — like Taylor Swift shows, and the FIFA World Cup — that are expected to draw thousands of visitors.

“The city just needs to clear all hurdles for zoning and regulation, and they would be operated by the private sector like all hotels in the city,” Kirby-Yung said.

She and Dominato will be bringing forward the motion to next week’s city council meeting.