Contest ‘Design the Hotel Room of the Future!’

ByThe Skeptical Traveler

Alt text: The image is a banner for a contest by Marriott titled "Room 2022." The contest is for product design with the theme "Design the Hotel Room of the Future!" The total prize value is $15,000. The prizes are as follows: 1st place - $3,500, 2nd place - $1,500, 3rd place - $1,000, 4th to 6th place - $500 each. There is also a "Sold Idea" prize of $2,000 and a Jury Award with prizes of $4,000 for 1st place, $2,500 for 2nd place, and $1,000 for 3rd place. There are buttons for stopping following the contest and sharing it.

I came across this contest after I logged on to Facebook and liked Marriott (yes, I know I am guilty, but the allure of 1,000,000 reward points was too much to resist to). And somewhere on the Marriott page it was a link to the contest.

It is free to submit an idea, but (there is always a ‘but’) an idea has to have at least one attachment (a media file) so the contest is geared more towards the graphical creative people so to speak. Everyone can submit text ideas so maybe this is the reason I have not seen this contest mentioned anywhere else. I suppose Marriott didn’t see the need to advertise it too much as anyway people in the business would learn about it one way or the other.
As I do not have any graphical skills I will upload the photo of a Japanese toilet, perhaps Marriott will have it in 2022 and my idea will be about the bathroom of the hotel room of the future.

The image shows the control panel of a bidet toilet seat. The panel includes various buttons with icons and text in both Japanese and English. The buttons are labeled for functions such as "STOP," "SPRAY," "BIDET," "FLUSHING SOUND," "WATER PRESSURE," and "VOLUME." There are also buttons for power and other settings. The panel is white with colored icons and text.

One of the interview questions at Microsoft is: ‘How would you design Bill Gates’ bathroom ?’ Even if I was never called for an interview I prepared the answer. So I will tweak what I have and submit the idea.

The submission deadline is 21-Dec-2011, 16:59 UTC+0000 (copy/paste from the site, I knew about GMT but not anything about UTC, after a quick reading on Wikipedia it seems they are the same) and more details about the contest are here.

Other contest, again about hotels, but this time with the deadline 23-Jan-2012: Develop exciting ideas to connect guests visiting the new “me and all hotels”
The image contains text with a small graphic on the left side. The text reads: "Connecting me with all Application Design: Develop exciting ideas to connect guests visiting the new 'me and all hotels'" The graphic on the left appears to be a stylized or abstract representation of the words "me and all."

And a suggestion for Marriott: Organize a contest “Room 2013” only for the Platinum Elite members as they spend most nights in a Marriott hotel so they would best know how the room should be like.

One Comment

  1. How about they stop throwing money away with design contests and just add some dang outlets. We don’t need the hotel room of the future when we don’t even have enough outlets in the hotel rooms of today.

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