Like most brilliant ideas, this one came about over
beers: a goldfish rental service for lonely hotel guests.
Incredibly the booze-infused concept quickly became a
reality and has since turned Hotel Charleroi Airport – an otherwise
ordinary inn near Charleroi, Belgium – into an unlikely internet
sensation.
Social media posts of the goldfish, which can be rented
for €3.50 (£3.20) per night, now occupy one of the weirder corners
of the web and have proven particularly popular with business
travellers.
“They like to go back to the office with an expenses
claim for goldfish rental,” said David Dillen, the hotel manager,
who decided to buy the fish while he was propping up the bar at the
family-run hotel.
“I was having a beer with my cousin and we saw some
people waiting to check in,” he told Telegraph Travel. “The queue
was quite long so I decided to go out and buy some fish [as
entertainment].”
The fish were initially intended to keep guests
entertained while they waited to check in, but the critters became
so popular that the hotel started renting them to lonely
lodgers.
The fish spend most of their time swimming around in a
bowl at reception, but when guests need some companionship they are
sent to receptacles in their appointed room.
The hotel has taken some flak from critics, who have
questioned the size of the goldfish bowl and the ethics of renting
the creatures to guests, but Dillen claims they are regularly
transferred to a big fish tank in the housekeeping department where
they have access to shelter and plants.