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Sci-fi destinations to become reality
Travel of the future to destinations on terra firma, underwater and in the space might soon become closer to reality than just science fiction. On the drawing boards are billion-dollar projects that will enable travellers to get great views from the skies and down under which will be truly facinating
A leading travel destination group, Thomson Holidays, based in the United Kingdom organized a Future Holiday Forum which brought together experts including architects, engineers and people specializing in social trends of the future to discuss the changing demands and prospects of travelers in the next two decades. In addition regular civilian flights to destinations in space would finally become a reality.
On the charts is the Cosmoplane to be developed by 2024, meant to be Concorde’s successor, will take travellers far-out, faster. All this has come closer to reality after SpaceShipOne made the first successful historical, manned private flight beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Thus, analysts now predict space hotels on the horizon.
Howard Wolff, senior vice president of the international architecture and design firm, Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo, (WATG) in Honolulu, Hawaii, explains that it’s just the matter of time and money.
“The obstacle is not technology. The Catch-22 is that a space hotel won’t be affordable until there’s a mass market for space tourism . . . and there won’t be a mass market until it’s affordable,” says Wolff.
According to Wolff, What is required is a re-usable fleet of launch vehicles. “You can’t have a successful hotel if you don’t have the means to get people there.”
He is leading his company’s vision of developing a hotel in Earth orbit. “The interest exists among prospective travellers.
Several companies are already testing the next generation of vehicles. The hotel investment community is intrigued but sceptical. All it will take is one entrepreneur with deep pockets who is willing to take a bit of a financial risk,” he states. His company has been involved in ambitious projects in 130 countries on six continents.
Flying far-out
According to Wolff the first space hotel is supposed to be a research as well as a commercial project to make it financially viable. All this might actually not be that “far-out” an idea as the company has being designing holiday destinations for more than half a century and so probably know what they’re talking about.
For tourists who do not want to leave the relative safety of Earth’s gravity, futurists at WATG also have in store a flying helium filled “airship hotel.”
They envision a technology based on a fusion of an airplane with a hot-air balloon. The airship hotel will cruise above at a leisurely pace, flying lower than an airplane and give tourists the opportunity to snap those beautiful birds-eye views. Passengers will be able to touch any amount of destinations on a single cruise.
Aquatic fantasy
An underwater hotel, to be located off the Jumeirah coast, where else but in Dubai, is to be ready by December 2006. Hydropolis will be the world’s first underwater hotel and will consist of three distinct components. One on land, the other would be a connecting tunnel and the third would be a submarine complex. The hotel itself will consist of a spa, a ballroom, shops and underwater villas.
A project factsheet explains it as: “Hydropolis is a splendid refuge far away from the stress factors of everyday business life and is ideally suited for guests from top management seeking to regenerate their inner strength.”
The designers of the hotel are of the view that water is the basic ingredient for life and a human being is 75 per cent water so the well being of a person depends upon the regeneration “of the basic substance.”
What is a ‘pod’?
Nadi Jahangiri, director of m3architects in London and his collaborator Ken Hutt are optimistic about the futuristic pop-up structures which can be erected or planted “anywhere from the Australian rainforest to the Antarctic.”
Both, Jahangiri and Hutt, reported at the Future Holiday Forum, “we propose a temporary, licensed, pre-fabricated, self-sustaining, transportable facility that can be located on sites and locations all over the planet in places where establishing a traditional holiday resort would be unacceptable environmentally and politically.”
These pods can remain in one spot for a period of 15 years or be dismantled and removed once the demand for that particular destination no longer fascinates tourists. It would be constructed on stilts and would leave just a small mark on the spot where it was located.
The entire structure would be fabricated off the site and then be transported to the selected location and assembled there. It would be self-sustaining and be easy to transport from one destination to the other. The waste would be deposited in a disposal unit, which would be at the base of the structure.
The pod would generate it’s own power by the solar power soaked in by energy providing photovoltaic cells. The rooms would be different sized according to the requirement and budget of the guests. The rooms would have the capacity to be upgraded or downgraded as “active” walls and floors would show changeable images according to the mood of the occupant.
The mode-changing select switch would change the scene from an ocean to a desert landscape or a jungle. Hotel guests would arrive at the pod by helicopter.
Coming attractions
In Asia, countries along the Silk Road, including Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan are envisioned as seeing a rise in backpacking tourists. For the “Real Arabic Experience”, the Middle East will have its own throng of visitors.
Slovenia and Slovakia are also on the future “hot spot” charts for their natural scenery and potential for the development of outdoor sports.
But the already popular traditional destinations won’t get out of the picture either as the older folks who have the time and money to spare might still opt for the comfort of familiar grounds and yet want newer places to discover. As far as traditional destinations are concerned, The Middle East, South America and Europe will still compete for the top notches.
With technology moving really fast in building more intricate, luxurious and fantastically sci-fi designs in space-age technology, engineering and architecture, hotels of the future too will be wonders of mankind’s desire for the perfect, out-of-this-world holiday experience.
The writer
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