My Wishlist For The Hotel Room Of The Future
Let’s see low-tech shower taps — and one high-tech aircraft-inspired feature
The exhibitors at the Independent Hotel Show, which took place at London's Olympia centre this month, are an eager bunch. They beckon to show me the latest in-room coffee machines, concierge waistcoats and "chemical-free" mattresses.
But I was headed for the "Hotel Room of the Future" stand. Here, Two's Company Interior Design had built a mock-up of what an ideal hotel room should look like. I have some proposals of my own.
The ideal hotel room should have a limited number of lights, each with its own switch, and those by the bed should be bright enough for reading. The shower taps should be simple. There should be a desk at which you can comfortably type or write, and a bank of sockets to accommodate phone and laptop chargers of the major plug types.
One other idea I have is so compelling that I'm saving it for the end of this column. First, Nicholas Sunderland of Two's Company, winner of several awards, including "Most Innovative Luxury Interior 2017", shows me around.
The central feature of the hotel room of the future is, naturally, the bed. Created by British company Simba, it can be adjusted into various shapes, including "zero gravity mode", where, according to the sales literature, "the recumbent's legs are raised above the level of the heart for improved circulation, and to relieve pressure on the lower back".
I have had my own lower back issues but, as I sleep on my stomach, I am not sure that raised legs, and an upwardly arched spine, would be optimal. I get a back twinge just thinking about it.
More interesting to me is that Sunderland tells me that a motion sensor turns on ambient lighting around the base of the bed when you get up, which aligns with my own exciting idea (which you will have to await patiently).
We then move to the bathroom, where a British company called SplinterWorks has created a banana-shaped black carbon-fibre "hammock bath", described as "the ultimate vehicle for total escapism, suspending you in bathing bliss".
As my idea of bathing bliss is a shower with comprehensible taps, we move on instead to two sensible features, neither novel, but unseen (by me anyway) in hotel rooms.
