Features

Live wires

29 Oct 2009 by AndrewGough

Hotels have to move fast to keep pace with advances in technology. Felicity Cousins asks what we can expect to find in our rooms in the future

Not that long ago, a hotel room that offered a flatscreen TV and dial-up internet was considered to be at the cutting edge of in-room technology. Suddenly, business travellers could settle down with their laptops and work in the privacy of their own room instead of traipsing downstairs with an armload of papers to a soulless business centre in the middle of the night. But technology moves fast and, with it, so do customer expectations, meaning hotels are under pressure to keep up. So what new advances can we expect that will transform the time we spend in our rooms?

In many top-end hotels, business travellers are surrounded by fancy technology ranging from motion-sensor and do-not-disturb lights to electronic curtains, TV speakers in the bathroom and multi-adjustable beds. But while all these gadgets certainly add to the comfort – and all too often, the complexity – of a room, the basic needs can be overlooked.

Marc Budie is technology director at Quadriga Worldwide, which provides hotels with the latest technology options for internet access, TV and music. He says that often it is the small things in a hotel room that can make life for frequent travellers frustrating. “It’s not only about [top-spec] technology, but about that moment when you get into a room from a long-haul flight,” he says. “Normally, the first thing you do is charge your laptop or your phone, and this often means you have to dive below the desk to try to find a socket. If you do manage to find one, then your plug falls out or it doesn’t fit – so this is the start of the frustration.”

Budie explains that inconsistency across hotels is a common problem. Sometimes internet access is wireless and sometimes it is wired, so you may need a cable with you. “When you are travelling, you are busy and tired, and you want things to work immediately, but often in a hotel you don’t know right away how everything works,” he says.

At home and in the office, we take for granted the set-up of equipment and the ease with which we can send an email or download a document. Huw O’Connor, managing director of hotel chain City Inn, says the hotel industry has struggled to keep up with what has become commonplace in the office or home. “People really want the same kind of technology as they are used to. Hotels have always offered other things to a high standard, such as fluffy white bathrobes and rooms cleaned every day, but [in-room] technology has tended to lag behind that.”

O’Connor says this is because the provision of entertainment and technology may have been driven more by its money-spinning potential than by what the customer wants. “Hotels have focused on pay-per-view movies, which a lot of customers are not really interested in – when City Inn offered it pre-2003, only 2 per cent of guests took it up. But a lot of hotels see it as a revenue-generating opportunity.”

As with other groups, such as the Rezidor Hotel Group, Malmaison and Hotel du Vin, and Hyatt’s Andaz and Hyatt Place brands, City Inn offers free internet throughout its properties. “Some hotels charge £15 a day for internet access and I don’t pay that at home, so why should I suddenly spend this because I am in a hotel?” asks O’Connor.

Budie agrees. “This is a challenge all hotels are facing, and on top of that, now there is [all this new technology] at home. You expect the same in hotels, and if it’s not there, your experience will not be as good.”

So you’ve found the right plug for your laptop and managed to get online, but then the connection is slow or it takes ages to download a file. Budie says this is the one big difference between web use in a hotel and at home. In your house, you are the only one logging on.

He explains that in the UK, at the moment the average hotel receives only four megabits per second (Mbps) of broadband line. “Take, for example, a 100-room hotel. For 30 per cent of its guests to be able to watch a You Tube video, which requires 500KB of bandwidth, it will need to receive at least 15Mbps. But it’s hard for hotels to get this without paying a lot of money for multiple lines – and [not all] of them are willing to do that at the moment.”

O’Connor says: “We might have 4Mbps or 8Mbps and our guests are happy, but we will try to see if we can get 100Mbps in the future because that is the way demand is going. With things such as iPlayer, people are becoming more bandwidth-hungry, and hotels will have to follow that if they want to keep pace.”

Michael Wale, Starwood Hotels’ senior vice-president for north-west Europe, says: “We also need to ensure our hotels can offer faster network speeds and increased bandwidth, which will become seen as a basic service that hotels should be able to provide to business travellers at all times of the day or night.”

If internet access is at the top of the technology wish-list for business travellers, what about their downtime? Many hotels offer other touches to keep tech-savvy guests happy. According to the American Hotel and Lodging Association 2008 Lodging Survey, just over a third of the 10,000 US hotels it looked at offered iPod docks in rooms.

Hyatt, for example, offers its iHome clock/radio/iPod with high-fidelity speakers. Meanwhile, the recently opened Upper House hotel in Hong Kong has iPod Touches in all of its 117 rooms, giving information on room service, the local area and the weather. Dean Winter, general manager of the Upper House, says this enables the property to offer “vital connectivity both in and out of the hotel”.

Starwood is installing “guest connectivity panels” (like a jack-pack that you can plug your devices into) in all new-builds and conversions, such as its Aloft and Element hotels. It is also putting “smart screens” in rooms – an all-in one TV and computer screen.

Meanwhile, City Inn provides Mac computers in all guestrooms and meeting venues across its six properties. These can be used for work but also function as a TV, and guests can listen to music and view DVDs from the free DVD library. “You can’t sell a hotel room if it doesn’t have a TV in it, so we had to make sure the Macs worked as computers and had the functionality of a TV too,” O’Connor says. “I thought business travellers would be using them for work, but we are all human beings and the two often become blurred – people are using them for leisure too. For example, we encourage people to use Skype video, free of charge. If I can’t be with my family then I want to wave to my kids and to do that at no extra charge.”

The other bonus of having a computer in the room is that you don’t need to lug around your laptop – all you need is a USB stick. But not everyone thinks this is the way forward. Joanna Stevens, director of sales and marketing at the Crowne Plaza in Kensington, says: “We have the usual in-room TV, internet and DVDs. Most people have their laptops with them so I don’t think you need a computer in every room.”

Wale at Starwood says: “We are focusing on guestroom technology as this whole model is changing. Today people bring their own laptops, iPods and other devices into the hotel, and so they want more control over what they do in the room.”

Bringing your own gadgets is something Quadriga’s Budie thinks will increase in the future. “We will see more technology that allows guests to use their own devices,” he says. But some properties are ahead of the game. Hyatt Place’s Hyatt Plug Panel allows travellers to plug their own devices directly into the room’s 42-inch HDTV.

Stevens says she hopes to see touchscreen TVs and wireless printers in hotel rooms soon, as well as minibars and TVs that know guests’ preferences. Quadriga unveiled its portal concept (pictured above) in October. Guests will be able to access the portal through their TV to view information on the hotel and local area, visit the hotel’s online shop, or choose from a range of entertainment in high definition format. The portals will start to appear in rooms next year.

Ultimately, whatever hotels come up with, it will likely be a reflection of what we are using in our everyday lives. O’Connor concludes: “I think about how fast technology moves and I have no idea where it is going, so the challenge for hotels is to keep up with that.”

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