A new hotel in Indonesia is trying to nab the title of being the “world’s skinniest.” But its creator says the project isn’t just about trying to set a world record – it’s about getting international attention for the small town he calls home.
Ary Indra grew up in Salatiga, Central Java. After training as an architect and making his career in Jakarta and Singapore, he felt himself called to return home to Salatiga – and to use his skills there.
There, he found an unwanted piece of land, which no one was willing to develop on due to its odd size. It’s now the home of PituRooms, a seven-room hotel (Pitu is Javanese for “seven”) that measures just 2.8 meters (9 feet) wide.
The building is five floors high, with each of the seven rooms big enough for a double bed and small bathroom with a shower and toilet. Each room has a different feel thanks to local artwork and interiors.
“I want people to experience Salatiga in a new way,” Indra tells CNN. “I own, designed and operate PituRooms with my own team. It has become my new platform to generate a new type of tourism which involves local communities.”
Salatiga is 300 miles southeast of Jakarta, and mostly unknown by foreigners who head to Yogyakarta, Surabaya or the nearby island of Bali for their holidays instead.
Case in point: Indra tells CNN that PituRooms, which opened in December 2022, has had “only five percent” non-Indonesian guests.
But within Indonesia, Indra says, Salatiga is known a tolerant city that has good food, good infrastructure and a good quality of life. It was a popular weekend getaway for the Dutch during the colonial era.
Indra says that most Indonesians think of Salatiga as a nice place to retire, but his hope is that PituRooms is the first of many projects that will help outsiders see that Salatiga is about much more than just living slowly.
“Aside from the technical difficulties, the biggest challenge was the typical mindset surrounding the hospitality industry that is used to superlative words: biggest, tallest, most luxurious. Here we are skinniest,” Indra told Dezeen, an architecture blog.
We tried very hard to turn this limitation to become our strongest selling point, that this is a built study of micro-space, and guests can experience the possibility of living and choreographing their movement in ‘just enough’ space.”
The city is at the foot of Mount Merbabu, which PituRooms guests can see from their hotel rooms.
In addition to the hotel rooms, there is a rooftop restaurant that locals can enjoy, and PituRooms plans to host events and art exhibitions.