The hotel chain is investing in factory-built structures to gain a competitive edge We?ve seen many a prefab home, and even a few luxurious prefab escapes, but a prefab budget hotel"
The Fairfield Inn and Suites of Folsom, California, outside Sacramento, looks exactly how you?d imagine a $117 a night suburban hotel would look: It?s clean, shiny, and has adequately modern decor. It?s also the first of Marriott?s prefab hotels, and a harbinger of a major shift in the chain?s business strategy?creating hotels faster, cheaper, and at a high quality by manufacturing their modular components in a factory and shipping them to the site.
Marriott?s second prefab hotel is already being erected in Oklahoma City, and the company anticipates signing up for another 50 factory-built hotels by the end of the year. The prefab option appeals to Marriott primarily for economic reasons: When building dozens of structures a year, it has the potential to be cheaper and more efficient?especially since the buildings across Marriott?s brands follow essentially the same layout. They also project that the process will cut construction waste from five to six percent of a building?s materials to just two to three percent.

Marriott via Co.Design
Marriott?s Oklahoma City AC Hotel

Much like the U.K.?s pivot to prefab construction, Marriott also anticipates benefits in terms of labor. Eric Jacobs, the company?s chief development officer in North America told Co.Design...