- A Titanic-themed Airbnb in Northern Ireland is available to rent for £200, around $270, a night.
- Guests are treated to ambient ocean noises, a full-size lifeboat sofa and a "kissing deck."
- The owner says he didn't want to focus on the tragedy, but the dreams of people on board the Titanic.
The owner of an immersive Titanic-themed vacation rental with a three-meter long ship-styled bed and "kissing deck" says it's the perfect spot for loved-up couples looking for an escape.
David Kinsella, an Irish film director and mastermind behind the home, told Insider it took two-and-a-half years to complete the Titanic-inspired home that he equates to a "little Walt Disney World" for adults.
The Airbnb is located in Belfast, near the Harland & Wolff shipyard where the original Titanic was built in 1909 and where it eventually set out on its ill-fated cross-Atlantic journey in 1912. While the real journey ended in tragedy and the loss of over 1,500 lives, Kinsella said his "fantasy world" reimagines the voyage as if it'd been successful.
"Rather than looking at the negative side of things, I decided let's make the dreams of the people who were going on the Titanic come true," he said.
Kinsella said the home is available to book on Airbnb and Booking.com for around £200, or $271, a night and can sleep up to five people in three bedrooms.
The "third-class bedroom" has walls featuring people working on scaffolding and skyscrapers in Manhattan, jobs which the owner said many aboard the Titanic would've taken up if the ship hadn't sunk.
Meanwhile, another bedroom in the home comes equipped with a three-meter handmade wooden Titanic-styled bed. "You're actually sleeping on the Titanic," Kinsella said.
The third sleeping quarter is known as the "Rose" room, aptly named after Kate Winslet's character in the 1998 James Cameron-directed movie.
"The room has 360 degrees views of the dancing scene actually from the movie," Kinsella said. Painting for the room, which also features a bed "floating on the ocean," took around 14 months.
Downstairs, the kitchen is decorated to depict the actual sinking of the ship and as well as the SS Californian, a ship that "sailed past but didn't do anything," during the Titanic tragedy, according to Kinsella.
"There's a full-size lifeboat and when you go in there, you have the ambient sounds with the wind and the waves and the birds that go 24 hours a day," he said. The lifeboat doubles as a sofa where guests can sit and rewatch the movie.
Outside on the "kissing deck" is where the romance of the home really shines, Kinsella said. "It's like a deck of the Titanic but it's painted 360 degrees of first-class, second-class, third-class couples all kissing," he added. "All thinking it's wonderful, leaving Ireland, Cork, on their way to New York."
Guests he's welcomed into the home "want to live the journey on the Titanic to New York," Kinsella said. While COVID-19 made it difficult for guests to visit over the past two years, he said his fantasy world has proven to be a success so far.
"I'm still getting these romantic couples just flying in to stay at my romantic world," he said. "I've never seen anything like these and I create them to give people entertainment."
While Time Out's review of the Titanic-themed home called it one of "the most questionable listings" they've ever found, Kinsella said all of his work always focuses on the positive.
"If you look at the Titanic one, why focus on the tragedy? Focus on why did everybody want to be on the Titanic," he said. "I've done it all my life. It's so much more difficult to make something positive as it is to make something negative."