Home
News
November 2024
Pod hotel to bring Japanese-style capsule stays to Edinburgh

Pod hotel to bring Japanese-style capsule stays to Edinburgh

November 29 2024

A former Debenhams department store on Edinburgh's Princes Street is set to become a pod hotel under plans filed by Criterion Capital and CDA for design-conscious accommodation catering to budget travellers.

The team are replacing earlier plans for an infill extension of arched balconies by reusing the facades and floorplates in their present guise to reduce their carbon footprint. Combining a 328-bed hotel with a 350-bed 'pod' hotel the leisure build will include a rooftop bar and terrace as before but retain the glazed facade at 111 Princes Street to maintain its subservience to listed neighbours.

Summarising their proposals, the applicant wrote: "The proposals focus on sustainability and reducing the carbon footprint associated with such a redevelopment by retaining and re-using the facades and floorplates in their current form. The proposals will preserve and safeguard the listed facades by incorporating a unique and flexible hotel brand offering which will work with the existing spaces, soffit heights, window locations and floorplate depths to create a dynamic and vibrant hotel in the prominent location on Princes Street."

Marking the launch of the Zedwell brand in the Scottish market the development offers travellers a choice of 'cocoon' rooms, a timber-lined enclosure not much bigger than a double mattress and capsule pods. The latter are modelled on the famed Japanese design of a single bed stacked in alternating rows accessible by a lockable roller shutter. More traditional premium rooms will also be offered.

New interventions to accommodate this include a 6th-floor glazed extension defined by vertical bronze fins framing a rooftop bar and breakfast area.

'Cocoon' rooms sit midway between a traditional hotel room and a capsule

A rebuilt roofscape will make the most of the hotels premier address

Coffin-like capsules will offer non claustrophobic guests access to no-frills accommodation

7 Comments

#1 Posted by Bob Smith on 29 Nov 2024 at 13:03 PM

Dear God No !
We need to do better than this

#2 Posted by Fat Bloke on Tour on 29 Nov 2024 at 13:12 PM

Battery chickens have more space -- love the sustainability angle to justify developer greed.

This is cannibal capitalism -- eating society around you to turn a trick and increase returns.

Not good.
Needs chased.

#3 Posted by The common man on 29 Nov 2024 at 14:53 PM

The previous scheme was better than this!

I do wonder how anybody at CDA can still hold their professional memberships given how much they clearly despise the public!

#4 Posted by Robert on 29 Nov 2024 at 15:18 PM

Having scan read the Council’s massive 2030 Plan for Edinburgh, tourism is apparently the third biggest employer in the city, so this application will doubtless be welcomed. However, to turn such a strategic building on Princes Street into a pod hotel is a disgrace and shows the downward spiral of our capital city into a tourist trap with no interest in the residents.