Would tourists pay to stay in NYC's vacant office space?

Danish design firm Pink Cloud has floated a plan that could help tourists and New York City's midtown office building owners.

The average office space vacancy rate in midtown Manhattan has grown to 21.6 percent since the recession. At the same time, the city has experienced record tourism with 52 million people visiting the city in 2012. In those two seemingly unrelated statistics, Pink Cloud sees an opportunity.

The concept behind the firm's Midtown Pop-Up Hotel is to offer everything needed to set up a temporary hotel in one truck. The equipment and furniture would be designed to fit into boxes that mirror U.S. pallet dimensions and could fit into a standard elevator. Each box would contain the equipment and furniture for each area of a hotel, including hospitality, dining and entertainment.

A clients could pick and choose, sort of like menu, different boxes, all of which would be color coded to create the hotel they want whether it's a luxury vibe or a more casual hostel. The boxes, 36 of which can fit in a truck, would be delivered to the vacant office for assembly. And poof! There's your hotel.

The Pop-Up Hotel proposal earned Pink Hotel the Radical Innovation in Hospitality's competition last month.

Of course, there are challenges, including legal questions, the logistics of hiring temporary hotel staff and whether even cash-strapped tourists would pay to stay in an office building.

Graphics: Pink Hotel

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com