This post originally appeared at Oyster.com.
The way we travel is always changing, and 2012 provided ample proof of that.
To help you prep for your 2013 vacay, Oyster honed in on the top trends currently rocking the travel world, from the royal travel craze to the rise of the pod hotel. Here’s what’s hot — and what’s not!
Celeb Hotel Designers
Celebrities and fashion icons — Kelly Wearstler, Oscar de La Renta, and Ralph Lauren, to name a few — have been designing hotel interiors for a while, but 2012 proved this trend certainly isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
This year we’ve seen tennis star Venus Williams design two presidential suites for the Intercontinental Miami, Diane Von Furstenburg design a two-bedroom penthouse for the Australian Hayman Island Resort, and Lenny Kravitz contribute to yet another Miami hotel design project — the SLS Hotel South Beach, coming soon to Oyster.com!
Tablets
Not only are tablets an increasingly common accessory for travelers, they’re used more and more by the hotels themselves. The Andaz chain, for example, uses tablets to check in hotel guests individually, rather than making them wait in a typical check-in line.
Other hotels offer loaner iPads for guests to use during their stays, or in-room tablets that operate as “digital concierges” for requesting hotel services.At the new Eden Roc in Cap Cana in the D.R., in-room iPads are used to control the lighting, sound system, and TVs.
Several airports are adding tablets to their restaurants, as well, for travelers to use to both order food and surf the web.
Pod Hotels
Space in hotel rooms comes at a premium in the world’s most popular cities, and we’re seeing teensy rooms (and rooms with bunk beds) not only on the rise, but becoming, well, cool.
In New York City, for example, Yotel (opened in 2011) has tiny cabin rooms clocking in at just 170 square feet, while the Out NYC and Wythe Hotel, both opened this year, offer rooms with bunk bed accommodations for bigger groups.
These aren’t hostels — these are some of the city’s hottest new hotels.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider