Abstarct: In this study, in order to combat the shortage of land and prevent the destruction of meadows and construction in marine areas, a barge has been converted into a hotel barge and its architectural design and layout are being addressed, which could be the best choice for solving the problem of accommodation shortage for Guilan province and other coastal provinces in the north and south of Iran. The main objective of the present study is to achieve the optimal number and height of floors considering the length, width, and depth of the barge body which is intended to be converted into a hotel barge. To reach this goal, first, the architectural standards of residential and hotel spaces on land have been reviewed, followed by an investigation of various maritime standards. Furthermore, in order to better understand the minimum suitable size for different spaces in a floating structure for human use, the layout of canal boats has been examined, which due to their activities in rivers and canals, have much narrower widths compared to hotel barges used alongside coasts. By examining the layout of canal boats, minimum dimensional ratios can be obtained. In order to gain a better understanding of the luxury and create a suitable space for the comfort of guests in hotel barges, various existing hotel barge layouts around the world have been investigated. In the next step, baxsed on important factors extracted from various sources and the layout of canal boats and hotel barges, three interior layout for a barge hotel have been designed using AutoCAD software. In the next step, the stability and buoyancy of the hotel barge with a specific number of floors are evaluated in Maxsurf software; if all marine standards for the number of floors are met, an economic analysis and return on investment of the project are carried out; otherwise, the number of floors is reduced until none of the various maritime standards are violated. Then, the most suitable layout and optimal number of floors for the hotel barge are selected. Finally, towing specifications and its cost analysis for a specific location are conducted. At the end, valuable results for barge hotel design, including equations for calculating the number of floors and structure height, different dimensional ratios such as the ratio of total structure height to barge width, freeboard ratio to floor height, appropriate buoyancy reserve amount, and minimum mextacentric height in a hotel barge are presented.