The travel industry may be suffering during these tough economic times, but hotels in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland have found a way to attract new visitors – let them sleep in beds of freshly raked hay in converted barns. For as little as 8 Euros per night ($11 U.S.),  backpackers, couples, families, and (in the case of one German hotel) groups of up to 60 can bond by eating together around a camp fire and then
rolling around in the hay.

Without the need for new construction, heavy laundry bills or other forms of high energy consumption, hay hotels are also an effective means of low-impact, sustainable tourism.

Link – via holeinthedonut

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by baweibel.

The Rancho Bernardo Inn in San Diego is trying a new tactic for drawing guests in a struggling economy: the "Survivor Package." For $19 a night, guests get a tent to sleep in (no mattress, linens, lights, or air conditioning, and forget the free breakfast).

Managers of the luxury resort hope people will return after the promotion willing to pay full price for all the amenities.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by PlumPerch.

I can’t find out much information about this bed — just some pictures listed on a real estate site. Yup, it’s for sale at $364,900. Comes with a house in Visalia, CA and a guarantee of perpetual virginity, like the AT-AT bed.

Link via Topless Robot

This music video by Oren Lavie, "Her Morning Elegance," shows how much fun you can have in bed with stop-motion animation.

From Oren’s MySpace page:

*The video was shot all stills – roughly 3225 still photos for the entire video, using one camera, hanging from the ceiling for the main body of the movie.

* It took 4 weeks before shooting to create an animated computer generated storyboard for the video, with 3d dummies for the characters.

* It took only 2 days of shooting for the live actors on set to re-create the 3.5 minutes computer sequence, frame by frame.

* Some of the bed sheets used in the video were taken from Oren’s own bedroom and are now considered collectors items, worth at the moment not very much and therefore used as bed sheets.

* Each of the wonderfully talented people above have worked on the video for a fraction of their normal rates (except Oren who worked for his normal rate of zero).

Don’t worry, completely safe for work (this is Neatorama, after all).

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

This has got to be the yummiest bed EVAR! Behold the Hamburger Bed (technically it’s a cheeseburger, but who cares?) which comes complete with an oversized bun duvet, as well as tomato and pickle slice pillows.

Link (yes, the bed has its own Facebook page) – via CrunchGear

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