The homeless “hotel” in Sweden isn’t nearly as terrible as it sounds

A magazine in Sweden is offering guests the chance to experience homelessness for a night.

The “Faktum Hotel” in Gothenburg, which does away with beds, bathrooms – even a roof – and is instead letting guests choose to spend the night sleeping rough.

It has selected ten places around the city where some of its 3,400 homeless people are known to gather and is offering a night in each.

The “accommodation” options on the hotel’s website are illustrated with atmospheric shots of locations including parkland, a toilet in a disused mill, a pavement alongside a canal and a corner beneath a motorway bridge.

Each location gets the kind of positive write-up you would expect from any hotel website, highlighting features such as the proximity to local attractions and the history behind dilapidated buildings.

The “rooms” cost £10 a night and can be booked for yourself or as a gift.

The scheme is a way of raising money for Faktum, which is a street newspaper in Gothenburg, similar to the Big Issue.

The money made on beds under the stars goes towards charity work for homeless and socially vulnerable people.

The editor-in-chief of the magazine, Aaron Israelson, told the Huffington Post, “We don’t think politicians do enough. This is a reminder of poverty and a way to get involved in an easy manner.

“There’s a lot of confusion and wrong ideas about who gets to be homeless and who is homeless. People in Sweden think that everyone that is homeless has a drinking or drug problem which is not the case.”

The Faktum Hotel website states it cannot guarantee guests their preferred space in the unlikely event of them actually wanting to spend the night outdoors.