Swiss-slumming it, first world-style

Do you lay awake at night worrying about your bills, relationships and future, not necessarily in that order? Offering the perfect escape from these unsavoury – and, frankly, selfish – thoughts is a wall-less, zero-door and ceiling-free Swiss zero-star hotel, which invites guests to stay up and agonise over all the stuff that what really matters – drum roll – ‘climate change, war and humanity’s endless quest for perfection’.

Launched by conceptual artist twins Frank and Patrik Riklin in Saillon, Switzerland, the ‘null stern (German for zero star) suite’, located between a petrol pump and a busy road, offers patrons the bare necessities: a double bed and table lamps – and a butler on standby.

With local food and fresh fruit juice to sample, the First World’s version of slumming it comes at a price of 325 Swiss francs (about ₹27,000) a night. If anything, it’s the perfect midway point between a particularly bad hotel, where one may end up fretting over funky smells, strange stains and waking up with a staph infection, or a really good one, where guests drown and massage away their anxieties in champagne and spas.

But even though ‘Panic-About-The-World’s-Problems-Getaways’ doesn’t have the same ring to it as sustainable travel or staycations, with new global crises every day, it might just deserve to be the next big holiday trend.