Flotel, a

portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.

of the terms floating hotel, is the installation of living quarters on top of

raft 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 barre ...

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 dr ...

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, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing of petroleum products. The largest volume products ...

Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Flotels were extensively used to house cleanup workers for the 2010

Deepwater Horizon oil spill The ''Deepwater Horizon'' oil spill was an environmental disaster off the coast of the United States in the Gulf of Mexico, on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. It is considered the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum in ...

in the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an oceanic basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southw ...

. 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 by type Petroleum production {{hotel-stub