The little-known Spanish company Galactic Suite, which has previously made bold pronouncements about developing a “space hotel” as soon as 2012, tells Reuters they’re on schedule to accept their first guests in 2012. For the bargain rate of $4.5 million, guests will be able to spend three nights in their “pod” in low Earth orbit (if that price includes transportation there and back, it would be a great bargain compared to the estimated $35 million for a week or so on the ISS.) How they’ll get there isn’t clear, other than that they’ll use “Russian rockets”. Given the demands on Soyuz for ISS missions, that would seem to be ruled out; the only potential alternative would be to partner with Excalibur Almaz (whose web site is currently down, hence the Wikipedia link), which is planning crewed flights starting in around 2013.

However, there’s precious little evidence that the company is actually on track in any realistic way for a 2012 launch. The company has a flashy web site (figuratively and literally), but it’s tough to find updated information: the news section is largely in Spanish, and appears to focus as much as plans to compete for the Google Lunar X Prize as for its hotel. (They have a blog as well, but, curiously, it requires a login.) When I’ve tried contacting them in the past I’ve never gotten a response. So if they really are three years from flying space tourists to their orbital station, they need to do a better job of demonstrating that they have the funding, technology, and various other arrangements needed for that to happen.