The pods cost between $35 to $45 per night, and can also be rented per hour.
They're being made by the company's Auckland manufacturing division, Jucy By Design, which also produces its distinctive green and purple campervans.
It's a concept that has been trialled in China and Japan and the $9 million, 271-bed hotel leased for 15 years from Christchurch Airport will be the first in Australasia. Jucy is paying for the $1 million fit-out.
Jucy was co-founded in 2001 by brothers Tim and Dan Alpe, initially as a campervan company with its brand led by the 1950s pin-up girl Lucy. It started out with 35 vehicles and now has 3500, and has grown to a sizeable company by New Zealand standards.
It has since expanded into rental cars, a cruise boat at Milford Sound, coaches, hotels, and a new tourism app Skoot, developed with Tourism Radio and Spark's app company Putti.
The app, launched last November, can be downloaded via a tablet on the dashboard or a smartphone and provides Wi-Fi, GPS navigation, and geo-located information and offers as tourists drive around the country. It's now being trialled by a number of other rental companies.
Chief "Jucyfier" Tim Alpe said while he's wary of "biting off more than we can chew", he hoped Jucy Snooze would become a bigger national chain in New Zealand and to spread across the Tasman next year.
The 256-bed Queenstown hotel will be part of an existing building owned by local property developer Ian Hamilton on a long-term lease.
"Not many people build two at a time but an opportunity came up in Queenstown," said Alpe. "We see a real opportunity to create something unique and different."
The Alpe brothers always intended to create an international brand and have just opened on the Gold Coast, their seventh in Australia.
Rental cars were added to the Australian business 18 months ago and it now has 700 vehicles.
Alpe said the company's other big priority was expanding on the United States' west coast where it had 350 rental vehicles and offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
The market opportunity was huge and being based in the Northern Hemisphere also lessened the impact on the business of the winter tourism slowdown in New Zealand, Alpe said.
The company has so far been funded from its shareholders, with the two Alpe brothers owning 35 per cent each and their father, Chris, 30 per cent.
Alpe said they no longer planned to list on the sharemarket, though "you never say never".
The improved performance of listed Tourism Holding was a good sign, though, if they did decide to go that route, he said.
In an investor update in April, THL advised it was likely to hit an improved net profit after tax of $24 million for the 2016 financial year, and moved forward by a year its target of hitting $30 million in NPAT, now in 2018.
- BusinessDesk
