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When Will We See The First Space Hotel?

Here's one contender.

SF fans recall the spacious lounge in the orbiting space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey; note the low curving ceiling (this space station was spun on its axis to provide artificial gravity for the guests).

Science fiction fans may recall the orbital retirement hotels suggested by Carl Sagan in his 1985 novel Contact.

Suddenly, hitherto unheard-of sums of money became available for investment in civilian orbital stations. By the very end of the Second Millenium there were rudimentary retirement hotels a few hundred kilometers up...
(Read more about Sagan's orbital retirement hotels)

I really enjoyed reading One Against the Legion, a 1939 novella by the great Jack Williamson; he describes a vast hotel in space in low earth orbit:

The New Moon was really new—a glittering creation of modern science and high finance, the proudest triumph of thirtieth century engineering. The heart of it was a vast hexagonal structure of welded metal, ten miles across, that held eighty cubic miles of expensive, air-conditioned space.

Far nearer Earth than the old Moon, the new satellite had a period of only six hours. From the Earth, its motion appeared faster and more spectacular because of its retrograde direction. It rose in the west, fled across the sky against the tide of the stars and plunged down where the old Moon had risen.

The New Moon was designed to be spectacular. A spinning web of steel wires, held rigid by centrifugal force, spread from it across a thousand miles of space. They supported an intricate system of pivoted mirrors of sodium foil and sliding color niters of cellulite. Reflected sunlight was utilized to illuminate the greatest advertising sign ever conceived.
(Read more about the New Moon Casino Satellite)

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