20-Year Prospect

20-Year Prospect

In some countries, hotels have become little more than tiny cubicles you can sleep and store your stuff in. This trend towards micro hotels is trendy, but we're not sure it's going to catch on as the main form of hoteling. Even tiny cubicle hotels probably need managers, but that's more like a job refilling vending machines than actually running an hotelier business.

Other than some more automation in the booking process, hotels will probably be much the same two decades from now, if a little more future-y. Some of them will be really nice, many of them will be overly expensive, and quite a few will be dirtier than legally or ethically acceptable. 

There'll be housekeepers fluffing pillows, chefs preparing all kinds of weird requests, and a maintenance staff constantly repairing future toilets that'll probably still be on the fritz from time to time for no apparent reason.

And there you'll be, overseeing the whole enterprise—through your virtual reality managerial holodrive.

The future's fun, isn't it?