Hotels.com sees searches for reused heritage hotels spike

According to data that Hospitality Net pulls from a Hotels.com report, searches for what the platform calls salvaged stays, hotels set inside converted heritage buildings, have shot up. Japan's Hotel Seiryu Kyoto Kiyomizu, once an elementary school, is up 194%. The UK's Bodmin Jail Hotel, a former prison, climbs 110%. In France, Fontevraud L'Ermitage, once an abbey, leans on the same historic hook.

None of this surprises me. We have watched for years how travellers pay more to sleep inside a story than inside a lobby full of generic marble. The product does the talking, and a building with its own past cannot be copied. The story here is not that people are searching. It is that the window is open and a good chunk of hotel real estate still looks at it sideways.

What I see is a development goldmine. Empty council buildings, disused convents, old stations like Nashville's Union Station. Conversion costs are real, sure, and heritage rules touch every decision. But the average ticket holds better than in a standard hotel. Anyone who cracks the technical side of reuse properly ends up with a product carrying DNA nobody can replicate.