Hotel Room of the Future

French hotel chain Accor have equipped a Noveltel hotel room with Micrsoft Kinect to create the "Hotel Room of the Future" until 14 February 2012: room 3120, Novotel Vaugirard Montparnasse. The Kinect can be used to operate room controls, as well as play games.

I am a fan of Accor's budget F1 hotels. This is perhaps where the technology could be most of use, to make lower cost, more environmentally efficient hotel rooms. The video screen could display a web cam image from the roof of the hotel and be draped make a virtual window, allowing for budget rooms to be placed in the core of the building. The "window" would also provide a TV screen, web browser and games console.

In Europe some budget hotels have communal bathrooms, but these are not popular in Australia. An on-line booking system on the screen, would allow for an automatically cleaned bathroom to be shared by several rooms. This would get over the worry of wandering down the corridor, with towel in hand, in the hope the bathroom is free and is clean. Instead you would know the bathroom is reserved for you and be able to unlock it with your room card.

Without a bathroom, the rooms could be reduced to be just large enough for the bed and space to walk around it, about 3 x 3 m for a double room. There could be a flip down desk underneath the video screen to form a desk, with the person sitting on the end of the bed to work.