Guests at this moving hotel will be able to travel between 13 cities without leaving their rooms
Imagine waking up in Los Angeles, traveling to San Francisco for a business lunch and the meeting friends for dinner in Las Vegas that same night. You’d be pretty exhausted by the end of the day, right? But what if you didn’t have to leave your hotel room to travel from city to city, and your room was actually part of a massive transit system that moved faster than the speed of an airplane?
This isn’t the plot of a science-friction movie—it’s actually a real concept developed by University of Nevada architecture graduate student Brandan Siebrecht, who recently won the Radical Innovation Student Award in a competition for imaginative hotel designs.
“Radical has long sought to predict the future of hotels by recognizing game-changing concepts in their infancy,” Radical Innovation founder John Hardy told Refinery29.
Siebrecht named his concept Hyperloop Hotel, and his idea is based on the Elon Musk-backed hyperloop that’s currently being developed. As the student Radical Innovation Award winner, Siebrecht received a $1,500 prize, and an opportunity to pursue a scholarship at UNLV to complete his Master’s of Architecture Degree in Hospitality Design.
He envisioned using upcycled shipping containers as guest rooms.
Each would be “outfitted for luxury” with a bedroom, bathroom, living room and office.
Hyperloop Hotel would have 13 locations: New York City, Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Sante Fe, Austin and Nashville. Guests would stay put in their rooms as they zoom from city to city.
The hotel would reportedly cost $130 million to build, which seems like a relatively small price to pay for a hotel that is so… futuristic.
While Hyperloop Hotel is still in the conceptual phase, the hyperloop on which it would travel could be reality as soon as 2020 by some estimates.
As you might imagine, this futuristic form of travel will cost a pretty penny. Traveling between the 13 linked cities would cost $1,200, but the price per night for the room has not yet been announced (we’re guessing it’s a lot).
But just imagine the bills you’d rack if you had to fly from city to city in the above Denver-New York-San Francisco example—not to mention the time this moving hotel room would save you!
A hyperloop is an experimental mode of transportation that propels pods through pressure-reduced tubes. The concept was introduced by Tesla CEO Elon Musk in 2013. Hyperloop Hotel is inspired by Hyperloop One‘s DevLoop, a test track that is currently being developed near Las Vegas.
Here’s an artist rendering of a bird’s eye view of a Hyperloop station:
A 500-meter-long track known as DevLoop is testing the Hyperloop technology in the desert, about 30 minutes outside of Las Vegas.
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In other words: This is getting real, folks. By 2020, we could be traveling in a whole new way.
While we wait for the Hyperloop to be perfected, let’s take a look at some of the technological gadgets from “The Jetsons” that actually exist today. For example:
1. Videophones
When a character on the “The Jetsons” made a phone call, an image of the person they were talking to popped up on a television screen. No one could have imagined that apps like Skype and FaceTime, which allow us to chat face to face over the phone, would be as commonplace as they are today.
2. 3D-Printed Food
The Jetsons could whip up any cuisine they wanted with a touch of a button. In 2017, 3D printers are churning out everything from dental braces to cars and yes, food. Whether you love chocolate, Nutella or cookie dough, there’s a machine that’ll let you “print” it on demand!
3. Smartwatches
Forget iPhones. “The Jetsons” went straight to watches that incorporated video. Whether you have an Apple Watch or one of its competitors, you can receive calls and texts, track your fitness goals or use maps to get where you’re going, all from your watch! Talk about living in the future.
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Pretty incredible, right? Read about more “Jetsons” high-tech items that now exist today.