Newly designed hotel travel suites could make road trips blissful

Aprilli Design Studio in Canada has introduced an autonomous travel suite which may just revolutionise how you get from A to C, be it for work or leisure.

The Toronto-based studio specialises in conceptual design and interactive art installations, and has developed a mobile hotel room for travellers to use between their homes and travel destinations.

The Aprilli Design Studio was founded by lead designer and architect Steve Lee. According to its site, the studio focuses on research, design and the implementation of sustainable design and planning strategies which ‘improve the quality of human life, society and [the] surrounding environment’.

The hotel vehicle is driverless and operates like an electric car, using the hotel chain’s exclusive rechargeable batteries. The studio maintains that the ATS is not a car, though, but rather ‘a hospitality-serviced mobile room’.

The suites are furnished with basic amenities as in a real hotel room, with sleeping and ablution facilities, and even a work space.

At present, the Autonomous Travel Suite (ATS) is intended for long distance domestic travel on the east and west coasts of the United States, and is capable of journeying for as long as 6-12 hours.

Aprilli’s Autonomous Hotel Chain will see to it that the suite-on-wheels and its guests can be serviced at one of the chains in every city along these coasts, where the vehicles can dock into a ‘parent unit’ to charge and access the likes of food and drink, meeting rooms and gyms, or more leisure-orientated facilities such a pools and spas in addition to housekeeping and maintenance.

Travellers can use an online app to customise suites to their taste and preferences, and additional equipment or furnishings will be delivered to them.

Lee and the Aprilli team are clearly enervating the term ‘transpitality’, a concept that merges – you guessed it – transport and hospitality.