For a lot of travelers the hotel is just a place to have a sleep, while some hotels could be themselves the most entertaining destinations. Here are  some of the most uncommon and weird hotels around the globe! read full article

NULL STERN HOTEL

Promoted as the world’s first zero-star hotel, the Null Stern Hotel occupies the underground space of an uninteresting studio flat block. The hardened concrete construction and  the near 2 foot thick blast doors were designed to take the full brunt of a nuclear or chemical attack.

 

Travels with Two featured the Null Stern Hotel under their "unique places to stay" category.

Null Stern Hotel on BBC world news - Fast Track January 10, 2012

With space holidays not quite a reality, you may not be ready to shoot outside the atmosphere just yet. What about a happy compromise? A cloud hotel.

The designers of what they call the "Manned Cloud" hope to have it operating by 2020. The giant airship will accommodate 40 passengers on a three-day global cruise at 5400m — and treating them with all mod cons.

It's not just the skies and space that man has big plans for squeezing the holiday dollar in the decade ahead. With water covering 70 percent of the earth, stand by. There's a hotel coming to an ocean near you.

The Jules Verne Undersea Lodge has already opened in Florida and there are plans for another in Fiji. It will be known as The Poseidon Resort. Dubai, of course, is building one known as Hydropolis. Istanbul has a seven-storey version on the drawing board. Opening dates remain fluid.

If you just want to eat and run and not stay beneath the waves, the Hilton's Conrad Maldives already has the world's first underwater restaurant.

In other futuristic developments, there's plans for a 10-star hotel in Beirut, but it's the zero-star hotel that's just opened in Switzerland that really took our interest.

The zero-star concept is a backlash against the excesses that brought on the global financial crisis. The Null Stern Hotel is in an old nuclear bunker. No windows, no natural light, no walls and one shared bathroom.

So, there's the future of travel — space but no stars.

 

Flying and cruising

The future of cruising is looking brighter than ever with 15 new ships launching this year. About 14 million people are set to sail in 2010 as cruising continues to be the fastest growing travel sector in the world.

In the next decade, river cruising will see a massive jump in popularity, and watch out for cruise lines offering more and more discounts for advance bookings.

Keep a lookout for the Norwegian Epic. It has water parks and bars made of ice. Also hitting the oceans is the 6400-berth Allure of the Seas, sister to the world biggest ship Oasis of the Seas which will feature on Getaway soon.

In 2011, Cunard's third-generation Queen Elizabeth will reinvent the golden age of ocean liners for a whole new generation.

While ocean liners are going all out to attract passengers with luxury and comfort, jet liners won't be far behind in 2010 and beyond.

Boeing's 787 Dreamliner is set to start flying in October. It promises to be quieter and cleaner, with innovative changes in interior design including cabin lighting and new-age seating.

When Air New Zealand's Boeing 777 takes to the skies, there will be big changes to long-haul flights. They've unveiled their new economy-class seating. Three seats will turn into a "sky couch", perfect for snuggling, children to jump around or single travellers to spread out.

Source

Translated from Indonasian to English. For original article, please click here

January 9th, 2012

Luxury hotel in the Cave
You never imagined staying in the cave with luxury hotel facilities? Well, here are a few rows of luxury hotel located in the cave:

White Cliffs Underground Motel
White Cliffs Underground Motel in New South Wales, Australia is an opal mining heritage in the territory of Australia. This motel offers a cool room.

Kelebek Cave Hotel
Turkey's Cappadocia region famous for its many caves. Volcanic activity led to the creation of caves and chimneys, which was made into the home since ancient times. Kelebek Cave Hotel in Goreme, Turkey was once the home of the family. Now it has furnished guest rooms and chimneys.

Gamirasu Cave Hotel
Gamirasu Cave Hotel located in the village of Ayvali, Turkey, a monastery that has stood a thousand years ago and has 18 rooms. Later this place used to be a hotel.

Sala Silver Mine
Sala Silver mine in Sala, Sweden, has been around since 400 years ago! Now owned by the government and largely converted into a museum. However, there is one bedroom suites for rent 155 meters down. The mine can also be rented for weddings, meetings and other events.

Les Hautes Roches
Les Hautes Roches in Loire, France, looks like a beautiful manor house. Has 14 rooms, two of the main building, and 12 carved from rock hill on the banks of the Loire River. This cave had been a dormitory of the Abbey Marmoutier and renovated into an inn in 1991.

Kokopelli Cave Bed and Breakfast
Kokopelli Cave in Farmington, New Mexico is a man-made cavern near the area, Corners. The only place in the United States where the borders meet. House with one bedroom including a kitchen, hot tub, and carpet.

Null Stern Hotel
Null Stern Hotel, Teufen, Switzerland, is a luxury hotel that was built from a former nuclear bunker. After a year, was built, part of this place turned into a museum. But the founder of the hotel is looking for other locations to expand the concept of Null Stern Hotel.

Cuevas Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
Room caves of Cuevas Pedro Antonio de Alarcon in Guadix, Spain, was once a private house. The owner bought a series of caves to keep them from bad weather. Of the 23 rooms in the cave, including suites with double bedroom and one specifically for newlyweds.

Posted by: Stacy Perman

With everyone cutting back on luxury items and non-essentials and companies slashing workforces, benefits and perks, a couple of clever entrepreneurs have introduced a spare hotel for lean times. Enter The Null Stern Hotel (Zero Star Hotel) whose name reflects the amenity-free hotel built in an abandoned Cold War-era nuclear bunker in Sevelen, nestled in the Swiss Alps. It is the brain child of twins Patrik and Frank Riklin, who conceived of the project after a local music festival revealed the dearth of local facilities for overnight travelers. At the 54-bed Null Stern, the walls are bare, there are no televisions, windows or sunlight, and a spin of the wheel decides which guests get hot water. There are however two classes of service: a standard booking features original military bunks while guests who book a luxury reservation sleep on antique Biedermeier beds and receive a coffee in the morning, cookies in the afternoon, and hot water bottles. Their operating motto is “less is more.” Recently, the Riklin brothers told the German magazine Der Spiegel that they have received inquiries from interested travelers as far afield as Japan, China, and Turkey. But future bookers beware: the bunker is still part of the Swiss military and can be called upon within 24 hours to be restored to its original function.

The Cold War could be described as the golden age of the bomb shelter. Fears of nuclear and chemical warfare caused many governments and individuals around the world to construct fortified bunkers. Urban planning anticipated massive bombing campaigns by fortifying schools and underground tunnels. This is one of the more utilitarian examples or architecture Global Site Plans has featured. As the perceived threat of nuclear war abated, many shelters were neglected and forgotten. What happened to these shelters, and how are they being used today?

The Null Stern Hotel in Teufen, Switzerland started out as an interactive art exhibit and where visitors would stay in a bomb shelter converted to a “hotel.” The project was so successful with so many requests from potential guests that the Swiss shelter stayed open for a full year as an actual hotel before being turned into a museum. The Null Stern Founders (Frank Riklin, Patrik Riklin, and Daniel Charbonnier) are now working towards expanding their original idea in other undisclosed new urban locations. Some bomb shelters still serve somewhat of their original purpose. The Swedish internet provider, Bahnhof, was looking for a secure area for their data center and offices. They found their newest location in a retrofitted bunker located thirty meters under solid granite outside of Stockholm. The designing architects counteracted the claustrophobic effects of shelter living with simulated sunlight, waterfalls, and vegetation.

Architect Rainer Mielke is famous for renovating Germany’s many neglected bunkers. Current German law prohibits internal renovation of bunkers in case they ever need to be used for their original purpose, so most of Mielke’s projects use the massive concrete structures as foundations for new additions. A similar project by Index Archtekten turned a Frankfurt bunker into artist studios and a school. The studios sit in a wooden addition built on the roof of the original concrete structure.

From bars to hotels, inventive designers are taking the forgotten relics of the cold war and re-purposing them for an eccentric and diverse clientele.What other creative re-purposing have you encountered?

Having attended an American public school and seeing for myself the black and yellow bomb shelter signs, have you ever been in a fallout shelter?

Credits: Images and data linked to sources.

Posted by Kholidil Amin on December 2, 2011

21 Null Stern Hotel

Although Null Stern means “zero star” in German, don’t pass judgement quite yet. Okay, we know, a former Swiss nuclear bunker turned hotel might not sound too appealing but the service is allegedly unparalleled. You can even have a butler serve you breakfast through a hidden tunnel.

To read the full article, please click here