Live Long and Travel: The Dawn of Space Hospitality

Guillaume Stelandre is the recipient of first place in the HFTP Spring 2025 Blog Competition. In his captivating article “Live Long and Travel: The Dawn of Space Hospitality,” Guillaume presents a compelling vision of the future where space exploration intertwines seamlessly with the realm of hospitality.

Space has always fascinated mankind, and space tourism is becoming a reality. The first space tourist, Dennis Tito, financed a seven-day flight inside the ISS for $20 million in 2001 (Becker, n.d.).  In 2025, SpaceX’s Fram2 launch sent civilian crew into first flight. The accelerating frequency of private, tourist-oriented space flights is a clear sign of a real desire for space tourism. Soon, staying in a luxury hotel in orbit could be a real possibility. But  are cost, travelers’ health and environmental impact impossible to overcome? 

Despite being a dream for every child, awareness of the risks and costs may change their minds as adults about taking part in a galactic journey. A survey of 14,000 European travelers reveals that over 76 percent remain attracted by the idea of traveling to and staying in space (Pellegrin, 2019).  Even if there are fears, 82 percent of people consider space travel to be a unique and incredible experience that allows them to observe the cosmos and discover zero-gravity. However, it seems to be a tourism of exploration and not a desire to colonize another planet (Cazes, 1999). 

Some concrete projects are emerging, notably that of the start-up OAC (Orbital Assembly Corporation), founded by NASA engineers, whose ambition is to build the first hotel in space, called Voyager Station, using the Prototype Structural Truss Assembly Robot, a semi-autonomous robot (Hospitality Net, 2021). The project is scheduled to go live in 2027, but Tim Alatorre, vice president of OAC, hopes to make these stays as affordable as a week in Paris or Sydney (Ratovo, 2021). 

However, many challenges remain. The absence of gravity can cause irreversible brain damage (Sullivan, 2021), although a simple one-week trip poses no real problems (Langston, 2017). However, there is a lack of clarity regarding the physical or psychological criteria for passenger selection (Langston, 2020).  

To create artificial gravity, Voyager is built on the model of the rotating wheel described by Wernher von Braun (Von Braun’s Early Wheel Space Station Concept – NASA, n.d.), which allows for the creation of centrifugal force. Ecological concerns and their impact on public health are also an issue. The Center for Space Policy and Strategy report is very alarming about the real impact of rocket engines (Ross and Vedda, 2018). Indeed, these emissions cause the destruction of the ozone layer and have a high carbon footprint. The cost of the trip is also likely to be very expensive. The prices offered by Virgin Galactic at $250,000 or Blue Origin at $200,000 for a few minutes in zero-gravity are unaffordable for most people (Zéau, 2018, Pellegrin, 2019).  Despite this, six hundred tickets were sold in 2019 for space flights by Virgin Galactic (Randall, 2021). The cost of such a trip will certainly fall in the coming years as space technologies evolve and improve. 

Many private investors are accelerating technological innovation. Since Sputnik in 1957, the development of human activity in space has moved from governmental organizations to private companies. As Matthew Weinzierl (2018) highlights that space brings in $300 billion in annual revenues, and space tourism could generate more than $3 billion by 2031 according to UBS (Randall, 2021, Ladiray, 2019). Moreover, the stock market values of companies like SpaceX, Orbital ATK, and dozens of startups like Blue Origins demonstrate the interest in private space exploration (Weinzierl, 2018). Public investment has also been rising in recent years, as evidenced by NASA’s commercial flight budget rising from nothing in 2004 to $6.4 billion in 2020 (Les retombées de la conquête spatiale, n. d.). 

Space tourism is unlikely to replace Earth-based tourism, but it could become a new luxury hotel segment in the near future. Technological advances should soon make it possible to find solutions to the many obstacles. Even if the cost of hotel stays in space is still unknown, a millionaire clientele with a taste for innovation will rush into this new, very exclusive sector, transforming dreams into reality.

This blog post was awarded First Place in the Spring 2025 HFTP/MS Global Hospitality Business Graduate Student Blog Competition presented by the HFTP Foundation. Participants are students participating in the Master of Science in Global Hospitality Business, a partnership between the Conrad N. Hilton College of Global Hospitality Leadership at the University of Houston, the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and EHL. The blog posts that received the top scores will be published on HFTP Connect. Learn more at HFTP News.

Guillaume Stelandre was born in Lille, in France and is passionate about sport, hospitality and Sci-Fi. Guillaume started his study at the EHL Hospitality Business School in Switzerland where he became very active in the student life of the school and its Alumni Network. He then continued his study in a master’s degree in Global Hospitality Business shared with EHL Hospitality Business School, Hong Kong Polytechnic University and University of Houston. 

References:
Becker, J. (s. d.). Astronaut Biography : Dennis Tito.

Cazes, G. (1999). La recherche en géographie du tourisme. Géographes Associés, 23(1), 101–103.

Von Braun’s early wheel space Station concept – NASA. (n.d.). NASA.

Hospitality Net. (2021, November 9th). The First ‘Space Hotel’ Plans To Open In 2027 [Press release].

Ladiray, M. (2019, March 25th) Etude UBS : Le marché du tourisme spatial pourrait chambouler celui de l’aérien. TOM.travel.

Langston, S. M., “Commercial space travel understanding the legal, ethical and medical implications for commercial spaceflight participants and crew,” 2017 8th International Conference on Recent Advances in Space Technologies (RAST), 2017, pp. 489-494, DOI: 10.1109/RAST.2017.8002956

Langston, S. M. (2020, June 11th). First space tourists will face big risks, as private companies gear up for paid suborbital flights. Astronomy.Com.

Les retombées de la conquête spatiale. (n.d.).

Pellegrin, H. (2019, March 26th) Sondage VoyagesPirates : 76% des Français se disent prêts pour le voyage dans l’espace.  TOM.travel.

Randall, P. (2021, July 19th) Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, SpaceX… : le tourisme spatial prend son envol. Les Numériques.

Ratovo, R. (2021, July 2nd). Cette start-up veut construire un hôtel dans l’espace. Fredzone.

Ross, M., & Vedda, J. A. (2018). The policy and science of rocket emissions. The Aerospace Corporation, 4. 

Sullivan, W. (2021, November 10th). Long trips to space linked to possible brain damage. Astronomy.Com.

Weinzierl, M. (2018). Space, the Final Economic Frontier. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 32(2), 173–192.

Zéau, P. (2018, October 29th). Un Français sur deux se verrait bien passer ses vacances dans l’espace. Le Figaro.