Imagine being able to travel between Austin, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Nashville, New York City, Portland, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Seattle and Washington, DC without ever having to leave your luxurious hotel room and potentially never incurring a jet lag. That's the premise behind the invention that won this year's Radical Innovation Award, an annual competition focusing on imaginative hotel designs.
The Hyperloop Hotel, as the invention is called, was designed by Brendan Siebrecht, a graduate architecture student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In essence, the project would feature 13 different hotels across different cities in America—all connected by a single transit system.
Photograph: Radical Innovation
The aforementioned system, called hyperloop, "is a mode of transportation that would propel a pod-like vehicle through a reduced-pressure tube," explains Business Insider. The concept was first introduced by Tesla CEO Elon Musk back in 2013 and a real test track for the concept, called DevLoop, is currently being developed north of Las Vegas.
Practically speaking, hotel guests would pay a relatively low flat fee of $1,200 (plus the usual per-night hotel price tag) to be able to travel between the various cities without having to board a train or a plane.
"Guests would be able to travel to any hotel destination within the network and even visit multiple destinations in a single day," Siebrecht told Business Insider.
When will America get to enjoy this phenomenal-sounding invention? Don't hold your breath. Given that the technology behind the potential transit system doesn't really exist yet, we'll have to wait a bit—although Siebrecht himself predicts that the project could turn into reality within five to ten years from now.