Mobissimo

Oceanfront hotels are a dime a dozen, from that modified shack I stayed in Sihanoukville in Cambodia to my villa in Cap D'Ail on the Cote d'Azur, they can be anything and everything.  Here's a great list of 20 top hotels that may pique your interest, more here via the Guardian UK.

Villa Val Des Roses, Cap D'antibes, France

You could drive here, park the car and not touch it until you leave: a sandy beach with a view to old Antibes is a minute away, the old town and market 10 minutes. Brothers Frederik and Filip are Flemish, in their twenties and found the Val des Roses after searching for the 'perfect place'. They put on an excellent breakfast, which you can have in your room, on the terrace or by the pool. The gracious white house is enclosed in its garden by high walls in a quiet little road. Fabrics and walls are mostly white, cool and tranquil.

Let the lists begin.  Here's a list of Hot Hotels for 2008 via the Times.  What does hot mean?  Read more here to find out, here's number one, albeit in France.

Le Couvent d’Hérépian, Languedoc Roussillon, France
Elegantly chic, wonderfully quiet, but not bank-breaking – it’s not often that you get that combination. But that’s what’s on offer at this converted convent with 13 suites in Languedoc Roussillon. Rooms are from £78 a night, yet they look as if they’d cost double that. The hotel, which has just completed its soft opening, has a laid-back atmosphere, with a small bar serving local wines and tapas.

Many travelers accrue tons of Hotel points via business trips and leisure trips, but often redeeming them is another question.  How best to use the precious points is best explained here via CNN.

Hotel loyalty programs have come a long way since they were introduced a quarter century ago by Holiday Inn. Initially viewed as the ugly stepsister of airlines' frequent-flier plans, they have shed their dowdy image, and points have become highly desirable.

What's changed? The value of a free airline ticket -- the ultimate reward offered by carrier loyalty plans -- has not risen significantly, while reward-point qualifying seats have become troublesomely scarce.

While I usually sleep on someone's floor, others may prefer something a little more luxury, check out the whole article here.

If I have $4 million in pocket change AND bored with terrestrial vacation spots, I may consider getting off the planet. Galactic Suite, a Spanish venture, will meet my needs. They seek to open a hotel in space by 2012.

"Before the flight, guests would get 8 weeks of intensive training at a space camp on a tropical island."

NYC. Everything, nothing happens in New York City. While you can party all night and spend the night at the library or Balducci's in lower Chelsea, most likely you need a place to sleep. You could stay at the Y for $120 or for $625 you can hang at the Hotel Gansevoort. A great semi-boutique hotel in the Meat Packing district, the Gansevoort has all the amenties needed for summer fun. Rooftop deck with pool? Rooftop bar with loungey sitting on thingies? Spa and exclusive lounge area below? Japanese style adjacent restaurant? Check to all of those. You can usually get a really good rate, i.e. $300 per night through Tablet Hotels, which Mobissimo will shortly search. Give it a shot, until then, you can visit the hotel site directly.

There are so many awards in the travel industry. Best Airline. Best Hotel. Best Place To Have An Illicit Affair. You know, the important stuff. We usually skip these  awards since they're just fluff. But this one caught our eye, because it's about the opposite. It's not about the fluff, at all. It's about, well getting naked. And there's not fluff there. Well, unless....Oh never mind. Back to the topic at hand, the world's best clothing optional resort, the Terra Cotta Inn. Some place in Palm Springs haunted by the ghost of Sonny Bono it appears. Don't be afraid, turns out clothing optional resorts are one of the fastest growing segments of the travel industry. And why not, you don't have the packing headache like you do with other vacations. Plus it's a very egalitarian environment:

The Terra Cotta Inn is called the most mainstream nudist resort in America and is perfect for couples trying nude sunbathing for the first time. This is why guests from around the world and especially from the U.S., Canada, England, and Australia fly there for their first clothing optional experience. Of course it also helps that Palm Springs has the best weather in America for nude sunbathing.

Who visits the Terra Cotta Inn? Everyone! You will see democrats and republicans, ministers, doctors, lawyers, nurses, police and firefighters, school teachers, military personnel, stressed out executives, retirees, and young newlyweds. You name the job and someone in that career has probably stayed at The Terra Cotta Inn. And all ages stay there too, from age 21 to the 80's.

Best Sellers

Alice Walker
Dr. Seuss
E. B. White
Edgar Allan Poe
Emily Dickinson
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Hemingway
Herman Melville
Jane Austen
Lincoln Steffens
Meridel Le Sueur
Sigrid Undset
Tennessee Williams

Classics

Agatha Christie
Colette
Mark Twain

Novels

Gertrude Stein
Oscar Wilde
Robert Louis Stevenson
Willa Cather

If you're looking for something different on your next trip to Berlin, consider staying at the Arte Luise Kunsthotel, an art themed hotel in Berlin where each room has been decorated by a different German artist:

All rooms were decorated by a renown artist, whereby the entire room was included in the concept. Thus, every room is an original, and all rooms are only united by the high artistic standards with which the concepts have been carried out. Sculptures in the lobby and philosophy in the stairwell accompany guests en route.

This Forbes article has a list of several strange hotels.  Undersea, treehouse, theme-inspired, you can stay in one of them tonight.

When the Smith family decided to build an exclusive resort in the northwestern Connecticut hills, they wanted to create something different. Really different.

They wound up with Stonehenge in the bathroom, a beaver lodge in the bedroom and a 17,000-pound helicopter in the living room.

I think a better article would be where's the strangest place you've slept for free.  Fire escape?  Parking garage?  Toilet on the TGV?  The stories abound.

You think more of the hotel amenities when it comes to designing a hotel. After all, you don't want to be spending too much time in your hotel room, you're visiting the city right? A look into what hotel room will be like in the coming years.

CHICAGO - What will the hotel of the future look like?

Think robotics, customized rooms and downloadable amenities.

That's according to a project called The Hotel of Tomorrow, organized by Gettys, a Chicago design firm, and the Hospitality Design Group. Companies participating in the project range from Starwood Hotels, Starbucks and Whirlpool to firms specializing in architecture, electronics, bedding, lighting and wallcoverings.

I don't know what the youth hostel of the future will be, but that's where I stay. Anyway, it looks like personalization is the main focus. From the channels you watch on TV to the songs on a personal iPod, feeling right at home seems to be the objective here.

Hotels. I think most are all the same, it's a room, a funny smell, and over-priced drinks at the hotel bar. Boutique and luxury hotels are now de rigueur, if you haven't stayed at the Faena in Buenos Aires, 60 Thompson in NYC, Hotel Costes in Paris, you're not really living. Starwood Hotels has launched a new hotel brand - aloft.

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y., September 28, 2005 - Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE:HOT) and its stylish W Hotels division revealed today at the Phoenix Lodging Conference, the official name and concept details for its much-anticipated new brand in the select-service hotel category: aloft. Conceived by the same W Hotels team that is widely regarded as creators of one of the most successful new brands in decades, the aloft brand will bring this tired, stagnant travel segment to new heights.

aloft. I don't know if the travel segment is 'stagnant,' but I guess it's good marketing prose. Amenities, style, and the scene, it's what's these hotels are all about. Whether or not you want to bump into Lindsay Lohan or Paris is another thing. Trust me, you find just as exciting people at the Motel 6.

Check out the bath tub on the right, with beautiful views of one of the busiest corners of Seoul. From Time Asia:

Attaining the physical and aesthetic heights required of statement buildings, and lapped by vast tides of Gangnam district traffic below, the Park Hyatt occupies one of the choicest sites of the South Korean capital. It is the work of fashionable Japanese design house Super Potato, and the firm's brightest bolts of inspiration were surely the Park suite bathrooms—translucent aeries that lord it over the unknowing populace. As you gaze upon the deskbound data slaves of office towers opposite, or down at the drones in buses, you feel both vulnerable and decadent in a way that is deliciously addictive. Handsome or horrible, fit or fat, just strip off, climb in and shout "Hello Seoul!"

---