the hotel of the future is coming
By Adrianne Pasquarelli. Published on March 21, 2018.
Click on the above question marks to explore the hotel of the future. Credit: Illustration by Patric Sandri.
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Dream better

Dark under-eye circles and chapped lips could be gone from weary travelers. With "neuroceuticals," guests could chug a cocktail of herbs and vitamins designed to enhance their sleep and body functionality. They might also wear a thin band around their heads that jettisons them into dreamland's REM cycle, bypassing tossing and turning.

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At your service

In the future, every traveler may have a personal AI butler who acts as a concierge. The butler—let's call him Giles—could help schedule shopping trips and accompany you on your Louvre trip, offering insightful bits of history and information on various artists as you peruse the museum. Giles could be "an extension of the hotel room come to life," says James Canton, a futurist and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures.

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Virtually entertaining

The job market for hotel experience engineers is looking good. In the future, travelers might download the type of hotel room they want to experience—a secret agent room, a rain forest environment or something from their favorite book—and VR goggles will do the rest.

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Delivery by drone

Order a kale sunrise smoothie to help start your day—and it could be delivered minutes later, by drone. Fresh towels, extra shampoo? Drones and robots could have it covered—human housekeepers and bellhops need not apply.

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Local fare only

The days of overpriced minibar chocolate or dusty potato chips could be over. Rooms might be equipped with vending machines containing not just the regular fare, but products from local vendors and those that promote fresh, all-natural ingredients. Hotels could also sponsor local marketplaces to extend the experience outward, says Canton.

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Print what you forgot

That dreaded front-desk call to embarrassingly admit what vacation essential you forgot? Maybe never again. Each room could be equipped with a 3-D printer able to print out everything from toothbrushes to consumer or entertainment products.

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In-room exercise

Equinox is bound to upgrade the fitness expectations—if other brands don't get there first. Hilton has already unveiled Five Feet to Fitness, an in-room concept with an indoor bike, training session and touch-screen display for training tutorials. Expect this trend to evolve so that a bike could transform into a treadmill and so on, and take up the least amount of space in a guest room.

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Meet and greet

You might still have to wear the suit, but at least you might not have to leave your bedroom. Weary business travelers could conduct their meetings by hologram.

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Here's the poop

The bathroom experience is ripe for innovation, experts say. But it could also be linked to the sleep experience, under the wellness umbrella. Toilets might be able to analyze a human's waste to identify diet deficiencies and then program sleep and food tonics accordingly with vitamin supplements. The feature could also be an advertising opportunity for pharmaceutical and health-care brands eager for sponsorships, says Canton.

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0nly you may enter

While keyless entry already exists, tomorrow's hotels could take the technology even further by implementing facial recognition scans at a room's doorstep. Visitors would need to pause for only a nanosecond, allowing for a quick retinal or facial scan, before the door immediately opens and their stay begins.

Imagine this: You check into a hotel without speaking to a flesh-and-bones human, without using your phone, without doing anything beyond walking up to your room and getting your eyeballs scanned for entry. You click a button and are suddenly in the rain forest, toucans croaking in the distance as a nearby waterfall releases a relaxing mist with humidity you're able to adjust through your augmented reality command center. Or maybe you're more of a space enthusiast, and you prefer the weightlessness of the intergalactic. You walk into a hotel that rockets off the earth into space, where you're able to conduct your business dealings via hologram as you orbit the moon.

With the hotel of the future, anything and everything is on the table as brands look to differentiate themselves in the $164 billion U.S. lodging industry. And that market is getting ever more crowded as new players from outside the industry create their own hotels. Equinox, the high-end gym chain, is debuting a much-heralded hotel brand with a focus on fitness next year. Detroit watch-and-bicycle retailer Shinola plans to open a 130-room hotel in Detroit later this year.

"There's a lot more choice out there," says Stacy Shoemaker Rauen, editor-in-chief and associate publisher of Hospitality Design. "How do you stand out, what are you giving that's different from the hotel across the street?" As the hospitality market continues its steady climb—occupancy in the U.S. hotel industry increased 0.9 percent to 65.9 percent last year, according to travel industry analyst STR—brands are choosing today to experiment with what might be possible tomorrow.

"The hotel business globally continues to be quite robust—it's been steadily improving since the trough of the '08-'09 crash," says Stephen Jennings, U.S. hospitality sector leader and principal at Deloitte Consulting, noting that hotel brands are focusing on "interesting, unique and compelling experiences" as they recognize "it's going to be really useful for them to evolve their service model."

However, the challenge for brands is putting their money into the right amenities. While Airbnb is gaining ground in the hospitality market (see "Overbooked") and is able to invest in its own technological advances, hotels don't have the same flexibility because they're dealing with a host of other costs.

A robot arm in the lobby of Manhattan's Yotel hotel stores guests' luggage.

"[Airbnb] can put so much money into the user interface because they're not running a gigantic global reservation system with property management and cybersecurity," says Jennings.

While some novelties are further into the future than others, all hotel brands are investing into innovation units to keep up with travelers' technology expectations. Late last year, Hilton announced it was opening its first Innovation Gallery, an incubator and showcase for new technologies located near its McLean, Virginia, headquarters. Marriott Hotels started its own innovation lab in Maryland two years ago. The project serves as a "live beta" investigation into new amenities, like personal greeters and an immersive kitchen, possible in future properties depending on consumer feedback.

"It's quite typical to have a chief innovation officer—most of the major teams will have someone," says Jennings. "It becomes 'How do I make this experience better … to make sure those innovations enhance the brand experience and provide a return?' "

Already, many futuristic features are in play. Several hotel brands promote "keyless entry" by allowing consumers to check into rooms via an app. Manhattan's Yotel hotel in Midtown touts its luggage-toting robot, Yobot, while last year the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas debuted a cheeky chatbot concierge, Rose, who promises to keep all of a guest's naughty secrets.

With the wellness tourism industry expected to reach $563 billion by 2020, according to the Global Wellness Institute, experts expect many hotels to focus on wellness as a key point of innovation, working to upgrade the sleeping and fitness aspects of a hotel room—as well as the bathroom. Brands are looking at everything, from dream tonics to improve your slumber to feces analysis to find out what's missing from your diet. Delos Living, a real estate company that injects aspects of health into its construction projects, both inside and out, recently partnered with hotel brands on a Stay Well program. After consulting with doctors and scientists, Delos included features to refine air, light and water to upgrade a hotel stay, and visitors can pay more to upgrade their rooms with the program.

Chains will enhance the business travel experience so road warriors who travel weeks out of every month don't feel like they're sleeping in a vanilla conference room. There's also a focus on environmental sustainability—architecture and design firm Snøhetta recently unveiled a look at Svart, an "energy-positive hotel" opening in Norway in 2021.

"Travel's hard, it messes you up and you get out of your own cycle," says Hospitality Design's Shoemaker Rauen. "Hotels that can try to help people when they travel by being a guide and elevating that experience are the ones that will stand out."

Web production by Chen Wu.