The 54-story tower planned to house The Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Los Angeles and JW Marriott when it opens in 2010 will also include an 8,000 sq ft screen on its eastern face, without disrupting the view of guests inside. The result of a deal between property owners AEG and sponsor Panasonic, the 50-foot by 160-foot screen will live in the neighborhood of the new Yankee Stadium and the Dallas Cowboys new home. No word on the exact res, but there will no doubt be plenty of HD as the entire complex, including Staples Center and Nokia Theatre, is getting Panasonic screens installed as part of the deal. Our reservations are already in, check after the break for an illustration of the future layout.

Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel has a long tradition of nurturing the literary-minded -- Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, even Harpo Marx hung out there in its heyday. Keeping up with the times, the folks running the Algonquin today apparently still have literature on their minds, and are offering Amazon's Kindle pre-loaded with a book of their choice for guests of the hotel during their stay. If they don't have all seven volumes of À la recherche du temps perdu loaded up and ready for us when we get there we're totally heading to the Holiday Inn.

[Via Kindle Boards]

Take one look at the room rates at the Malibu Beach Inn, and you'll fully understand why you'll be treated to a loaner iPod touch for the duration of your stay. For those who already own an iPhone / iPod touch, they'll be given access to a web application that was built for the Safari browser to give guests all sorts of remote capabilities. For instance, ordering up room service, setting a wake up call, requesting luggage, renting a limo and flipping the door placard to "Do Not Disturb" no longer requires any strenuous work; instead, users can simply hit a few buttons and be on their way. The hotel chose a web app in order to avoid the Apple certification process and to make it available on other hot devices in the near future. But then again, if you can swing this place, you've probably got a butler handling the front-desk inquiries, anyway.

[Via Fashion Funky, thanks Daisy]

We can't say with a straight face that the capital of Azerbaijan is high on our list of places to vacation at, but for Star Wars fanatics, the case could be different. Reportedly, Heerim Architects has dreamt up a couple of "lunar inspired" projects for the Asian country, one of which (Full Moon Bay) looks an awful lot like the Death Star. Granted, the building looks entirely different from varying angles, but we're choosing to focus on the one that brings back fond memories of light sabers blazing and wookiees waltzing. Truth be told, we've no idea if these facilities will ever break ground, but we're absolutely certain the powers in Dubai are already planning to recreate the entire Star Wars universe if this thing goes forward.

[Via Inhabitat]

High-tech hotels are nothing new, but Philips' "One Star Is Born" hotel project is less about decadence than about making hotel management easier and cheaper. The system, which will first be implemented at the citizenM hotel near Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, consists of pre-fabricated rooms which can be instantly brought online by connecting just four cables, which enable an RFID keycard, flat-screen entertainment center, free wireless, and a "MoodPad" lighting controller which controls the lighting, shades and temperature to set the appropriate ambiance. Settings stored on the RFID card can be changed remotely, so guests can login and set their preferences before they arrive, and Philips says all this tech will help hotel owners cut costs by up to 50%, which sounds a little too good to be true. Still, as long as the wireless is free, we're not going complaining. Peep citizenM's silly video after the break.

Those terribly saddened by the recent drought of Phantom Entertainment news now have something to celebrate, as the current king of vaporware has seemingly inked an utterly worthless marketing agreement with ProGames Network to "place the Lapboard and Phantom Game Service content in [select] hotels." Reportedly, the two have agreed to place Phantom's not-yet-available wares into hotels found in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australasia (fancy, huh?), but to no one's surprise, neither firm mentions a target launch date.

Believe it or not, booking a hotel in space may become a reality sooner rather than later, and if things go as planned, the Galactic Suite will actually be welcoming in guests sans gravity in just five short years. Folks who make the trip will be able to "see the sun rise 15 times a day and use Velcro suits to crawl around their rooms by sticking themselves to the walls," and while spas with floating water sure sounds like something we'd be interested in, the nightly fees are quite literally out of this world. How much? Try $4 million for a three-day stay -- better bring your camera, eh?

[Via PCWorld, image courtesy of MSNBC]

We know how it is, out on the road with choices to make in regard to which hotel you stay in the for night, but booking a room in a joint that lacks high-speed internet of the free variety just isn't going to happen. These days, however, the gadget-packed traveler demands even more connectivity options, and apparently Marriott gets it. By the year's end, Marriott International plans to have 25-percent of JW Marriott, Marriott, and Renaissance guest rooms in the US and Canada hooked up with 32-inch LCD HDTVs that boast a nifty "digital connectivity panel" to encourage gadget integration. Guests will reportedly be able to plug in laptops, camcorders, digicams, video games, and iPods (we presume DAPs / PMPs in general) into the swank set, and the built-in PIP functions will allow the business savvy to check their corporate inbox while playing back a video clip in another window. Additionally, the firm plans on throwing in a bevy of new channels to delight couch-dwellers, and the rollout is slated to hit completion by 2009. So if you just so happen to be stopping in the San Francisco area and feel like checking this out, SF's Moscone Center has officially been dubbed the first to offer such niceties in 100-percent of its rooms.

[Via TGDaily]

As if the Burj Al-Arab (and Time Residences) in Dubai wasn't unique enough, Omniyat Properties is getting set to construct a 23-story luxury tower inspired by none other than Apple's iPod. Slated to be built in Business Bay, the "iPad residential tower" is scheduled to house more than 200 units, and was "designed by Hong Kong-based architects James Law Cybertecture International." The high-rise will sit atop a "docking station angled at six degrees," which should have iPod fanboys flying over in droves just to snap pictures. While no preliminary sketches have surfaced quite yet, we'll be sure to keep an eye out for future development (ahem) of the world's largest iPod, and you can go ahead and pencil in "sometime in 2009" as your "must-take" vacation.

Although you may have skipped the whole Boy Scout thing as a kid and still can't envision yourself ever setting foot on a campground, Travelodge's Travelpod may be of interest. Chances are if you've never tried roughing it in the wilderness just for kicks, you may still have considered camping out for certain launches of inexplicable importance, or found yourself homeless after a long day at name-your-music-festival. Travelodge is aiming squarely at those who turn their noses at the the thought of a tent by offering a semi-portable hotel room at various outdoor venues. The palatial pod is sealed up by clear polycarbonate glass to keep those pesky creatures out of your dwelling area, and features a "luxury double bed" (since when have hotel beds been luxurious?), tables, lights, duvets, pillows, carpeted flooring, a mirror, and even a fully functional bathroom. While we're unsure how similar the restroom is to an indoor outhouse, we do admire the effort, and the sealed nature of the pod helps to quell the noises of the nocturnal. The Travelpod will be offered at various concerts and festivals in the UK next year, and if catching a good night's rest just doesn't happen while you're flat on the ground, you can shack up in style for £26 per night.

[Via Core 77]