Design firm turns empty New York City offices into pop-up hotels

New York welcomed a record 52 million visitors last year and aims to reach 55 million annual tourists by 2015.

This growing number of tourists is looking for cheap, well-designed hotels similar to the pre-fab models like CitizenM and Marriott's new Moxy brand that are cropping up in Europe.

To accommodate these budget-minded travelers and make use of empty mid-town offices, Danish design firm Pink Cloud proposes a plan for turning vacant buildings into design-friendly temporary hotels.

The hotels would be quickly constructed with materials that arrive in color-coded boxes and are organized into dining, entertainment, and sleeping areas. Owners would choose design schemes ranging from hostels to luxury suites and each property would have flexibility to tailor the lobby, laptop area, recreation room, and event space to a certain theme.

The concept is proposed as a tool to boost the local economy and revitalize tourist-friendly mid-town, a process already underway. Two challenges that will make the idea little more than a clever concept: Getting a property up to code is harder than decorating, and despite a softening, New York still has one of the lowest vacancy rates in the U.S., and there's a small matter of zoning.