To the Moon for $250,000: First lunar hotel to open by 2032

When you truly want to get away from it all, sometimes even a remote island doesn’t feel remote enough. But if a few ambitious entrepreneurs and designers have their way, we may soon be able to literally step off the face of the Earth.

Skyler Chan, the 22-year-old CEO of Galactic Resource Utilization Space (GRU), recently announced that he is accepting bookings for a hotel he plans to open on the Moon within the next 10 years. He is so confident in the project's success that he is requesting refundable deposits ranging from $250,000 to $2,000,000.

Greco-Futurism and Inflatable Rooms

The initial iteration of the GRU lunar hotel will be inflatable to reduce the cost of transporting materials from Earth. For a more high-end facility later down the line, Chan aims to create a "Greco-Futurist" atmosphere.

"The Moon is just the beginning; we want to build the first cities on Mars using the same technologies and architecture," Chan told The Post. However, he offered a blunt warning: "This place isn't for everyone—any technological revolution meets resistance. Those who are afraid, doubtful, poor, or picky had better stay on Earth."

In the beginning, lunar living will be a far cry from the comforts of a Mandarin Oriental. The hotel will have only four spots, and the structure will remain inflatable to save on shipping costs. Instead of room service or a celebrity chef's restaurant, guests will eat the same freeze-dried food used by astronauts on the International Space Station.

Lunar Leisure

Guests will navigate the landscape in spacesuits and specialized lunar rovers to participate in activities curated by Chan. "I think people will walk on the Moon, explore it on rovers like they’re in the desert, and hit golf balls," he said. Chan plans for guests to stay for five nights—even though one lunar day is equivalent to approximately 29 Earth days.

He anticipates that transportation to the hotel will be provided by companies like Blue Origin or SpaceX. "We expect launch costs to continue to drop—and significantly," he added.

Looking further ahead, Chan hopes to create a larger, more opulent version of the hotel.

"Our document features a sketch [of a deluxe hotel] inspired by the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco; it's like Greco-Futurism. We imagine that thousands of years from now, people will come to this great hotel on the Moon and say, 'This is the first man-made building here.' It’s very monumental," he said.

The New Space Race

Chan’s project was developed within Y Combinator, the startup accelerator that launched Airbnb and Reddit. While the goal is ambitious, he is fully committed. "I grew up dreaming of being an astronaut, but I realized it’s more important to create something that allows everyone to get into space. My goal is to make humanity interplanetary within my lifetime," Chan said.

Chan is not alone in his cosmic ambitions:

• Axiom Space: Founded by billionaire Kam Ghaffarian, the company expects to have a commercial space station operational by 2028. A spokesperson told The Post, "This will allow for the commercialization of space and the development of a global space economy."
• Jeff Bezos: The Blue Origin founder plans to house millions of people on orbital space stations. "In the next couple of decades, millions of people will be living in space," he said at Italian Tech Week 2025.
• Above Space: In 2023, this Alabama-based company announced plans for Voyager Station, a $1 billion luxury space station.
• Swain Shine: An architect from India, Shine is planning a hotel on Mars with a 40-year horizon. "I think it will become a tourist attraction; people will explore craters, and dinners will be prepared on 3D printers," Shine noted.

Despite the audacity of these projects, experts believe that interest in space is genuinely growing, and the achievements of recent years have been nothing short of impressive.