The first hotel with working robots, according to the Guinness World Records, Henn na Hotel is far from your average property. It’s not just any robot that greets new arrivals either: the front desk is manned by dinosaur robots. This quirky hotel is a tech-lover’s dream with rooms equipped with automatic cleaning machines (wardrobe-like capsules designed to remove odours and wrinkles), AI room remote control and Chromecasts to link devices to TVs. Even its pillows feature special technology to ensure guests get a good old-fashioned night’s sleep.
A tech-driven guest experience is core to the fun and funky YOTEL hotel brand. YOTEL Singapore on Orchard Road has its trademark minimalist and futuristic aesthetic, contactless check-in via self-service stations, Smart Beds that convert to couches and smart TVs offering device connectivity. It also has two special staff members: YOSHI and YOLANDA, robots that autonomously navigate the hotel to deliver amenities to guests. Missing human interaction? The “Mission Control” team are never far away.
Old meets bold new ideas brilliantly at Rosewood’s first foray into South America. The hotel, which opened in January 2022, is part of a large-scale project to revitalise and greenify Cidade Matarazzo, a complex of early 20th century buildings in the capital. The Rosewood occupies the former maternity hospital, and includes the distinctly sci-fi vertical garden designed by famed architect Jean Nouvel. It's clad in overlapping grid-like trellises where 250 trees, species native to the Mata Atlantica rainforest, grow upwards. With Philippe Starck in charge of interiors, you can expect plenty of innovation and creativity inside too.
In a city of ultra-modern architecture and super-luxe hotels, it’s hard to stand out. But when ME Dubai by Meliá opened in 2020, it did just that. The only hotel to be designed both inside and out by the late architect Zaha Hadid, ME occupies the first five floors of the resplendently curvaceous Opus by Omniyat building, with its distinctive free-form void. Inside it wows with its curved spaces, sharp angles and bold materials. Particularly futuristic is the hotel’s four-storey flood-lit atrium, which sits beneath the undulating void (the bottom of which forms its glass ceiling). Here curved white balconies create a seriously stylish spaceship-like feel.
Set against an unearthly landscape of volcanos, lava fields and hot springs, this jutting, stilted and stark structure is as space-station-like as they come. ION Luxury Adventure Hotel lies at the base of Mount Hengill sitting over a mossy lava field. With its concrete and black exterior, it’s distinctly modern, yet chimes in with the marvels of nature that lie all around. The innovative hotel also makes good use of its environment, including using geothermal water and energy from the hot springs to feed its natural pool. If the Northern Lights are dancing across the sky during your stay, you’ll truly feel like you’ve entered another dimension.
A hyper-modern retreat overlooking the Sea of Cortez, Viceroy Los Cabos is at once serene and startling. Located in Baja California’s exclusive Los Cabos, its all-white exterior stands out against the blue sea, sky and desert backdrop, and the sci-fi-esque building combines cuboid shapes, straight white lines and fluid features to great effect. One of its restaurants also resembles a bird's nest and is reached by elevated walkways that create a sensation of walking on water. Pure magic.
As well as its super-slick structure, inspired by a wavelength of energy, Orlando’s shiny new hotel is all about smart and future-forward tech. Its rooms – where “art meets automation” – have smart TVs, tablets with a digital concierge, voice and app enabled in-room controls, View Smart Windows that tint in response to the sun, and keyless entry. It’s big on wellness technology, too, from its beds and bedding to its toiletries. Rosie the Robot helps at large events, delivering food and drinks, and she’s named after the housekeeper in space-age cartoon The Jetsons. Fittingly, the hotel is based in Orlando’s tech hub, Lake Nona.
Lining a bushland-backed beach on the fringes of Yala National Park, where leopards, sloth bears and elephants roam, there's an unusual wilderness safari camp. The cocoon-like lodgings of Wild Coast Tented Lodge look positively alien. Meanwhile, its open-air, bamboo-clad bar and dining area mirrors the shape and colour of the egg-like boulders that lie scattered across the beach. Even its free-form infinity pool is distinctly modern. Other forward-thinking features include the use of local, sustainable materials, solar panels which produce around 40% of the camp's energy, and waste-water collection.
Like a gleaming golden egg laid in the Alps, the AlpenGold Hotel is an extraordinary sight, especially when Davos wears its snowy cloak. Sat at the foot of the Flüela Pass above the shores of Lake Davos, the oval-shape structure is clad with waves of gold-coloured steel that create a shell around the hotel. It's a striking juxtaposition to the traditional low-rise wooden chalets that sit near it. It opened in 2014 as the InterContinental Davos Hotel, but changed management in 2021. Its opening hours are seasonal – it reopens for summer in July.
It seems fitting to stay in a space-age inspired hotel when in otherworldly Iceland and this low-budget (by Iceland’s standards), centrally located Reykjavik hostel features futuristic space pods. The Galaxy Pod Hostel's communal rooms are called “sleeping capsules”, ranging from one with four queen-size pods (great for families) right up to dormitory-style capsules with 24 pods. Some pods have TVs and all come with spacey mood lighting and screens for privacy. There are safes and lockers for securing luggage and belongings and guests can cook in the kitchen or nip out to explore.
Both a design masterpiece and an innovative concept, Arctic Bath appears to float (or be entombed by ice, depending on the time of year) on the Luleå river in northern Sweden like the nest of a bizarre creature. The hotel offers guests a unique year-round Arctic wellness experience with a giant ice bath that’s ringed with three saunas, a treatment room and hot baths. With its crown of logs, the building’s design was inspired by the area’s historic logging industry, with an onus on local materials and a desire to leave a minimal environmental footprint. The hotel has 12 guest cabins – six are on water and six on land.
You expect the unexpected when checking in to Treehotel, a collection of contemporary, design-forward treehouses also in north Sweden. But its UFO is the most startling creation. It hovers above ground in the complex's serene forest, and inside, guests are immersed in a space-inspired cocoon, where the ceiling has small windows to peer out over the forest looking for alien life forms (or birds). Suspended on wires, the pod moves, too, so you really do feel like you're going into orbit.
The sweeping futuristic form of the W Hotel on Yas Island has made it an architectural landmark, and it’s the only hotel in the world to be located on top of a Grand Prix racetrack. Its grid-like, curved shell has around 5,000 lights, yet the wow factor extends beyond its façade. Welcome desks in its reception area are shaped like oil drops and traditional nose clips worn by pearl divers decorate the walls. Abstract wooden structures evoke the shape of boats and flowing black lines are reminiscent of the abaya (traditional Emirati garments) too.
Big, bold and ultra-modern: the tilting twin glass-and-aluminium towers of AC Hotel Bella Sky Copenhagen might seem more at home in the Middle East, but they’re a striking addition to the Danish capital’s skyline. With its two halves linked by a sky bridge, the large design hotel is all Scandi-style inside with natural materials, warm smoky colours and floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto views over a neighbouring nature park.
Standing tall over La Paz’s Calacoto district, Atix Hotel is architecturally intriguing with its parallelogram-shaped structure and huge floor-to-ceiling windows, designed to immerse guests in their surroundings. Along with its directional design, which has seen it join the Design Hotels portfolio, are numerous nods to Bolivia’s culture and past. Its façade is clad in native wood and Comanche stone, a locally quarried material; indigenous arts are featured in its interiors; and local flavours are on the menu.
The first and only hotel project by architect Frank Gehry, Marqués de Riscal opened in 2006 and still wows with its daring design. Its wavy titanium and steel ribbons appear even more striking in contrast to the surrounding vineyards and historic bodega buildings. The spectacular 5-star hotel is in the medieval town of Elciego in the Rioja wine-growing region, with its 61 uniquely designed guest rooms set across two buildings. Needless to say, the wine list is excellent, as is the food at the hotel’s Michelin-starred restaurant. Its innovative spa has a range of vinotherapy treatments too.
Rising out of an abandoned quarry in the Sheshan Mountains to the west of Shanghai, this semi-submerged hotel is a future-facing architectural marvel in more ways than one. Designed by architect Martin Jochman (previous works include Dubai’s Burj Al Arab), the Intercontinental Shanghai Wonderland is tipped as the world’s first subterranean hotel (16 of its 18 floors are below ground). Its industrial-modern design draws inspiration from its surrounding landscapes: the cliffs of the quarry, its waterfalls (represented in the gleaming lift shaft) and the green hills beyond.
With a design inspired by cruise liners, Hotel Lone looks more like a luxurious spaceship that’s landed in a pine forest. Set next to the glimmering Adriatic Sea, just near the old town of Rovinj, the Y-shaped hotel, with its tiered white curves, was Croatia’s first Design Hotel. Inside, its tall, light-filled lobby is a lovely space with more curved lines and contemporary artworks. Outside, a large, free-form seawater pool, complete with whirlpools, waterfalls and geysers, is another unconventional but appealing feature.
Straight out of a sci-fi film, the Zaha Hadid Architecture-designed Morpheus Hotel is the flagship structure in the City of Dreams resort. Described as “world’s first free-form, exoskeleton-bound, high-rise architectural composition” by the architect firm, its twisting form appears as if punctured by three holes. Inside, the futuristic feel continues with a high light-filled atrium, boundary-pushing artworks and smart-tech touches. Curvaceous furniture characterises the ultra-luxe guest rooms and suites too.
Set to open in the Arctic wilderness of Norway in 2023, Svart is a highly innovative, off-grid hotel that aims to showcase a "better and greener sustainable approach to travel". It will be the world's first energy-positive, off-grid destination – in other words, it will generate more energy than it uses. The extraordinary circular, stilted structure appears to float on Holandsfjorden and looks positively extra-terrestrial. It will lie at the base of the Svartisen glacier in the brooding Saltfjell mountain range with its name, Svart, meaning "black "in reference to the glacier's dark ice.
There’s a lot to take in at this eye-popping thermal spa hotel in Austria’s Ötztal valley. Enclosed by towering mountains, the resort’s steaming, bowl-shaped pools appear to float above the ground’s surface. The larger saltwater pool also has underwater music and light effects for an out-of-this-world flotation experience – the moonlight bathing sessions are highly recommended. At the centre of the thermal pool area is the spa dome, which juts up like a giant crystal, while the pointed roofs of its observation-deck area echo the surrounding peaks.
Is it a moon, a UFO or an oversized doughnut? The jury is out, but either way Sheraton Huzhou Hot Spring Resort is a startling sight, appearing to loop out of Taihu Lake's waters in Huzhou, near Shanghai. The hotel's arresting ring-shaped structure rises to 331 feet (101m) with 27 floors, and it’s particularly impressive at night when its interior and exterior lighting causes its surreal reflection to shimmer in the water. Although it looks futuristic, the architects were also inspired by the past: its arch is suggestive of the stone bridges characteristic of the area's ancient water towns.