The Infinite Hotel

Hilbert's Grand Hotel has a room for every natural number, all occupied. A new guest checks in anyway; so does an infinite busload; so do infinitely many infinite buses. The night manager's tricks are bijections, and they work until one bus arrives whose passengers cannot be listed — and a diagonal argument turns them away.

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An infinite corridor of rooms, all occupiedfront desk12345678910111213141516⋯∞original guest 11original guest 22original guest 33original guest 44original guest 55original guest 66original guest 77original guest 88original guest 99original guest 1010original guest 1111original guest 1212original guest 1313original guest 1414original guest 1515original guest 1616the next newcomer, waiting at the deskN1NO VACANCY— and yet: welcome
Every one of the infinitely many rooms is occupied. A tired traveller walks in at 2 a.m. The night manager does not say “sorry”.
the manager's move
checked in tonight0
guests displaced—
guests homeless0
double-bookings (rooms 1…400)0
rooms left empty0
Step 1 of 5 — No vacancy, welcome

A finite hotel is full when the guests run out of rooms. An infinite hotel is never in that position: ask everyone to step one door down and the request never fails, because there is no last guest standing at a last door with nowhere to go. “Full” and “no room for you” come apart.

The other half of the trick is that a re-rooming is a rule, not a schedule. The manager does not walk the corridor knocking on doors; he announces “your new room is twice your old one” over the tannoy, and infinitely many people move at once. A single rule can do an infinite amount of work in one step — which is why the fleet of buses is no harder than the one bus.

Then a bus arrives whose passengers are infinite coin-flip sequences, and the manager’s luck runs out. Whatever list he posts in the lobby, you can walk down it building a passenger who disagrees with room 1 in flip 1, room 2 in flip 2, room 3 in flip 3 — and that passenger is nowhere on the list.