Flotel, a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsraft A raft is any flat structure for support or transportation over water. It is usually of basic design, characterized by the absence of a hull. Rafts are usually kept afloat by using any combination of buoyant materials such as wood, sealed barrels ...

s or

semi-submersible platform A semi-submersible platform is a specialised marine vessel used in offshore roles including as offshore drilling rigs, safety vessels, oil production platforms, and heavy lift cranes. They have good ship stability and seakeeping, better than ...

s. Flotels are used as

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a re ...

s on rivers or in harbour areas, or as dwelling for working people, especially in the offshore

oil industry The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry or the oil patch, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing of petroleum products. The larges ...

Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Flotels were extensively used to house cleanup workers for the 2010

Deepwater Horizon oil spill The ''Deepwater Horizon'' oil spill (also referred to as the "BP oil spill") was an industrial disaster that began on 20 April 2010 off of the coast of the United States in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, considere ...

in the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...

. Cities along the shore in some cases were unable to accommodate the large number of workers needed for the cleanup, so BP used flotels to house some of the workers. BP told the media that flotels were convenient because they allowed workers to be close to cleanup sites, lessening travel time.

Coronavirus pandemic

In Singapore, two floating hotels, the Bibby Renaissance and Bibby Progress were served as quarantine ships before March 2021 during the Coronavirus pandemic.

References

Ship types Hotels {{hotel-stub