Why Aren’t More Luxury Hotels Doing This?

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But now, I’m pretty interested in a new hotel from Hoshino Resorts in Japan, because the company looked at an 118-year-old maximum-security prison and thought “Yeah, let’s have people sleep there.”

The new HOSHINOYA Nara Prison hotel opened June 25 inside the former Nara Prison. It’s the last fully intact survivor of Japan’s “Five Great Prisons of Meiji:” five prisons built in the early 1900s as proof of the country’s development and modernization.

The other four are gone, but this one was a juvenile facility until 2017, when it closed. Soon after, Hoshino Resorts spent seven years working with the national government to turn the extremely unique property into a 48-room luxury hotel that still has some of those historic penal vibes.

We are not short on new hotels, but we don’t need to be building giant new spaces on all available land. That’s why this one matters (and, of course, the fact that it’s in a former prison).

I haven’t been there, but from photos, it looks like original details like red brick, vaulted ceilings, and hand-built elements were preserved, not replicated. The guest rooms are connected former cells. Hotel guests also get exclusive early morning and late-night access to the on-site museum, which includes a restored cell block, when it’s closed to everyone else. That’s cool if you’re a slightly offbeat history nerd like me.

Why aren’t more hotels doing this?

Granted, not every brand is the kind of company that would open a hotel in a former prison. And this may not work if the hotel was, say, Alcatraz, instead of a low-security youth facility (or hell, maybe it’d be even more popular, who knows)?

But it’s probably less about how sleeping in a former prison might be polarizing, and more about the difficulty of adapting old spaces. It’s slower, more expensive, more technically complex, and not everyone’s cup of tea. And those factors may make staying in hotels like this more expensive; the Nara Prison hotel starts at about $250 per night — certainly more than I normally spend on a room. But if I’m going to splurge, I’d rather spend it on an atmospheric, unique property I can’t find anywhere else in the world, not a generic high-end resort that could be anywhere from Belize to Budapest.

Okay, some hotels are doing this

I’m the kind of person who would jump at the chance to sleep in a former prison. Turns out, I may not have to go all the way to Japan to do it (though I still want to). I did a quick search, and if you’re also a weird history nerd, you’ll want to add these hotels to your travel bucket list, too.

Liberty Hotel, Boston: It’s housed in the Charles Street Jail, built in 1851. It reopened as a 298-room luxury hotel in 2007. Babe Ruth once said it felt more like a hotel than a prison, which turned out to be spot on.

Four Seasons Istanbul at Sultanahmet: This was originally built in 1918 as a prison for “intellectual dissidents” but became a hotel in 1996, with the hotel’s Avlu restaurant set in the former inmate courtyard.

Malmaison Oxford: The hotel occupies a Victorian prison built in the 1850s within the historic Oxford Castle complex. Photos make it look like it has a lot of original features, including the old wooden prison doors and a hallway that makes it look like you’re walking into a prison block (with a touch of disco lighting, naturally).

Interlude Melbourne: This hotel used to be the HM Prison Pentridge, which housed famous Australian criminals, including gang leader/folk hero Ned Kelly. It has just 19 suites, including an underground pool that looks like it comes from the white-collar prison of your dreams.

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