Belgium’s Pairi Daiza zoo announces new underwater hotel

The Pairi Daiza hotel offers guests unconventional insights into animals’ lives. (Photo: Pairi Daiza)

Pairi Daiza gives guests a chance to sleep among sea creatures or get a true bird’s eye view of their surroundings.

A private Belgian zoo near the French border has unveiled plans for a unique underwater hotel within the grounds of the complex.

Renders of the multi-level hotel reveal underwater, jungle floor and canopy level rooms, meaning guests can pick which kind of creature they want to spend the night next to.

We find out more about this unusual offering.

Pairi Daiza follows hotel success with Land of the Cold

Pairi Daiza, a private zoo in Belgium, has found a novel way to attract visitors to its animal-laden complex. The zoo has already found hospitality success with an on-site hotel it previously opened, and so they are doubling down by going deeper, higher and better.

This new and improved offering will come in the form of a three-tier hotel which brings guests underwater, to the prowling level of large cats and up into the sky with a view over the park’s treetops.

The new 50-key hotel will be known as Pairi Daiza Resort, Land of the Cold, and is a truly unique lodging experience.

Sleep with tigers, wake with polar bears

Renders released by the zoo show a wooden, cabin-like structure set over three levels. The room interiors are spacious, warm and comfortable, but with generous expanses of glazing so the guests staying inside can get up close and personal with their de facto roommates, the zoo animals themselves.

Guests might awake to see a friendly polar bear peering through the glass on the bottom, underwater level, or to the sight of a tiger lounging on a tree branch on the middle floor, or hear exotic birds rising in the morning on the highest floor.

The rooms on the underwater level appear cave-like, as if they have been carved out from the seabed. The middle and upper floors are executed in natural materials such as wood and stone, and exude a tropical jungle feel, as if the cabin were on a remote Pacific beach.

Pairi Daiza was inspired to expand the section of the hotel that already offered guests the opportunity to get unparalleled views of the wildlife on site when they noted that this area had occupancy rates of 82%. The Land of the Cold will be ideal for families, friends and couples.