Futuristic: Orbital Technologies has revealed plans for a space hotel, which could be open by 2016(dailymail.co.uk)

Click for more photos of the space hotel

If you're tired of the Mediterranean and don't want to head to Disney again, perhaps it's time for a summer holiday in space? It would certainly be one way to avoid the crowds.

As the space tourism battle heats up, Russia has unveiled plans for its first floating hotel, 217 miles above earth, and it is something of a boutiqueoffering.

Hosting just seven guests in a four cabins, the accommodation will boast huge windows with views back to earth and tasty microwave meals will be served instead of the freeze-driedtubes of nourishment so often used by astronauts.

Just getting there will be an adventure in itself – it will take two days aboard a Soyuz rocket – and it won’t exactly be a budget holiday: A five-day stay will cost you ￡100,000, on top of￡500,000 for your journey.

The hotel, or the Commercial Space Station to give it its proper name, is due to open by 2016 and, according to those behind it, will be ‘far more comfortable’ than the International Space Station used by astronauts and cosmonauts.

In the weightlessness of space, visitors can choose to have beds that are either vertical or horizontal, while showers will be sealed affairs to stop water going where it shouldn’t (those aboard the International Space Station must make do with sponge baths until they return home).