下榻海底

Here's a hotel worth writing home about: a company in Poland plans to build tourist accommodation under the sea. The structure can be towed to a suitable location and placed on supports on the sea bed.

 

The 'Water Discus' will be made up of an underwater disc containing 22 bedrooms with sea views, connected by lift and stairs to a disc above the surface containing other hotel facilities.

 

Robert Bursiewicz, a project manager at Deep Ocean Technology, says: "Nowadays it's possible to build submarines which go deeper than 500m below the sea surface, so building an underwater hotel is not a problem."

 

In fact, they don't plan to have the hotel very deep. Water acts like a filter for sunlight, and below 15m most colours, apart from blue, are washed out. And we all want to see colourful marine¹ life, don't we?

 

But this isn't the first hotel to offer underwater views from the bedrooms. The two-bedroom Jules' Undersea Lodge², off the coast of Florida, has been taking in guests 10m beneath the surface since 1986.

 

The company that operates the hotel also runs a course on scuba³ diving for beginners to help get guests down and into the hotel. It is accessible only through an opening at the bottom.

 

And you'll find all the usual amenities⁴ in the room, according to Teresa McKinna, Jules's chief financial officer. It has a television, air conditioning and wi-fi. But for the staff, simple things like cleaning and changing bed linen⁵ can be challenging, since the lodge is submerged in sea water.

 

"It actually takes quite a lot of work to get anything down there," she says. "We have to put everything in waterproof⁶ boxes and attach weights to them to counter their buoyancy."

 

The hotel has suitably sized waterproof boxes so that pizzas can be delivered by divers⁷ to guests who order them for their evening meal.

 

And after a meal, if you can't sleep because of the excitement of the experience, you don't have to count sheep. You'll fall asleep quicker if you count fish.

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