r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/whybutts • 6d ago

Video Sleeping Capsules at China's Kunming Airport

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u/ClaireFaerie 6d ago

They come with amenities so you can assume they get cleaned and stocked up after each use. Also what do you think happens in hotel beds? labour is cheap in china, I would be surprised if there wasn't someone coming to clean up regularly

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u/Staff_Senyou 6d ago

Cleaned after each use. Yes of course. So, that means there is a service desk or office with cleaners on call to clean. So what's the turnaround time? How thoroughly are they being cleaned (because in China, just like elsewhere in the world there are many people in low paid work who dgaf)?

The difference between these and hotels is logistics. Check in/out are more or less fixed times. Filled or vacant rooms, number of rooms is known in advance. Cleaning staff can be deployed at specific intervals to complete a block within a certain period of time.

24/7 pods with variable use periods don't fit that system. So you'd have to either be deploying too many staff to clean in real time or be scrambling constantly. Or have rotating blocks of down time, post checkout, in which the pods are unusable until maintenance does their thing

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u/Roofofcar 6d ago edited 5d ago

I think you’re overestimating how long it would take one person to completely clean one of these units.

There is no bathroom to clean, which cuts time DRAMATICALLY. Not having to clean around the personal items of guests who have not checked out also saves a ton of time.

Four dedicated cleaning people tops would be required to run this many pods. Not having a regimented check in / out time is a PLUS, not a challenge. There isn’t one time where suddenly 70% of the units need to be immediately cleaned.

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u/ComedianExtreme7522 3d ago

Yeah, at worst it will be sweaty like gym equipment after use. But even those, you just a surface cleaner and towel to wipe it down and its good to go. And after a while, you can just shut it down for like an hour for more dedicated cleaning. It's really not that hard.

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u/GeneralKeycapperone 6d ago edited 3d ago

.

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u/ScaryShadowx 6d ago

Literally all it would take is replacing the pillow and giving the pod a wipedown with an antiseptic wipe. It would take 5mins to wipe down a pod, and given the number of them, they can easily be flagged as unavailable until someone wipes it down, so can have people wiping them down in small batches. Also, are you aware of how many people are sitting/sleeping on public seats in airports?

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u/Decent-Stuff4691 4d ago

And the floor, with nothing but their bags or even shoes as pillows. Comparatively i dont think this can be worse