The Nearby Hostel is designed and produced by three young inventors from Croatia
The hostel business in Croatia is booming these days. New facilities boasting fabulous design and great reviews are springing up constantly, but owing to the usually small numbers of rooms in hostels, we’re still lacking in accommodation units when it comes to current demand. Any addition to the existing offer counts as good news, and here’s an inspiring story about a product that might significantly improve the situation in near future.
Three young Croatian entrepreneurs came up with the idea for a mobile hostel, supposedly the first of its kind in the world, reports lokalni.hr. Mihovil Grgurić and Tin Vidović from Osijek, along with their partner Ivan Malić from Zagreb, designed a container unit that quickly turns into a hostel with four rooms and a total of 12 beds. The unit is 6,5 metres long and 2,4 meters wide, and doubles in size once it’s opened.
“Our concept was to provide optimal comfort in a small space. It’s not a tent, it’s not a sleeping bag, it’s not a beach. It offers shelter from the rain, and personal belongings can be left inside without fear that someone might steal them. If one needs to charge their mobile phones or laptops, they can do it inside the unit, they don’t have to look for an outlet elsewhere. There’s Wi-Fi. The beds are comfortable, and they’re located 100 metres from the festival stages. When the guests leave the festival at dawn, they can be in bed in half a minute”, said the 21-year-old Grgurić about their Nearby Hostel. The units are also equipped with AC, and it doesn’t take more than 30 minutes to set up the units and make the beds.
The creative trio made the first designs last spring and set out on a search for investors. It took them half a year to make the prototype in a warehouse in Osijek, using parts produced in Italy, Austria, Germany and Romania, while the construction itself was carried out by multiple companies in Osijek.
The prototype was presented last Saturday at the Panonian Challenge, the biggest extreme sports competition in the region. Grgurić announced they are planning to design another model featuring 25 beds, as well as one with showers and toilets.
“The mobile hostel represents a perfect solution to the accommodation problem that local festivals experience each year. ‘Ultra in Split gets 150.000 visitors, while the city disposes of 19.000 accommodation units with 33.000 beds. That’s the market for our project”, stated the young entrepreneur.
If you want to know more, check out their website, or take a look at this video presenting the 25-bed unit:
