IV

| W E D N E S D AY , S EPTEMBER

12, 2012

FINANCIAL Chronicle
WITH

INTERNAT IONAL HER ALD TRIBUNE

world business

Hotels go digital to be competitive

Some o ering extras like iPads in rooms for the new linked-in guest
BY HARRIET EDLESON

One hotel has a customized application that allows guests to request early check -ins or to order valet service. Another offers exercise videos with virtual instructors in its tness room. Hotels may have come late to technol ogy, but re cently they have been jumping in as travelers, especially those on busi ness trips, demand to be constantly connected and expect hotels to make that possible. Hotels now see technology as a way to stand out in the cr owd of brands. The hotels are looking at a total strategy, said Lorraine Sileo, vice president of research for the travel mark et research rm PhoCusWright. Its all about interacting with the customer at the right time, at the right place. As their homes have become mor e technologically advanced, travelers want as much on the road, if not more. And different age groups and types of travelers expect different types of service fr om hotels. We re in a period of tr ansition, said Bjorn Hanson, divisional dean of the Tisch Center for Ho spit alit y, Tourism and Sports Management at Ne w Y ork University. Hotels are disco vering not only how to be different, hotels are trying to gure out what people re ally want. They seem to want pr oductivity and the wow factor . They ask themselves, Is what I get at the hotel at least as good as what I have at home? Business tr avelers vary. The younger tr aveler wants to know why they need to plug in, Mr . H anson said. Why not have Wi-Fi everywhere? Their expec tations ar e higher . Their work is affected more when current technology is not av ailable. They want technology wherever they are, whenever they need it. For baby boomers, he added, a hotel can be a place to try technology that they have not yet purchased. David Stahl, president of Cr owdMa gnet, a specialt y marketing company based in Minneapolis, said that he traveled 140 to 160 days on av erage a year. Lik e many frequent travelers, he carries a smartphone and a laptop, his two portals to the world. He relies on va rious apps, including FlightAware and SeatGuru. Though he said that he was not a tech-driven guy , he ended

up making a dinner reservation via an iPad he found in his room at the Plaza Hotel in New York recently . My f irst thought was somebody for got it, Mr . Stahl said. But a staff member told him that it was for concier ge service. It was pretty neat, Mr . Stahl said. Almost two years ago, the Chancel lor Hotel on Un ion Square in San Francisco collaborated with Amaratech, a Bay Area hotel technology c ompany, to create its own app that guests can use before and during their stays to re quest early checkins, late checkouts and searches for nearby restaur ants or to order valet service. With technology, guests are doing everything by themselves , said Nathaniel Ramos, the hotels dir ector of sales and marketing. At the Ocean House in Watch Hil l, Rhode Island, guests can use fr ee iPads as well as virtual tnes s machines in the OH! Spa. On a touch-screen machine the size of a bank s A. T. M., they

Travelers want as much on the road as at home, if not more.

can select tnes s classes lik e spinning and Zumba at any hour of the day. Once a choice has been made, a large screen descends fr om the ceiling , and a virtual instructor appears. Guests do not see technology as just one thing . It is a combination of services and gadgets. They re used to being connected and linkedin wherever they are , said Lindsey Ue berr oth, president of the Preferred Hotel Group, a collection of mor e than 650 independent lux-

ury hotels. Th e No . 1 thing tr avelers want, she said, is high-speed Internet acces s and enough bandwidth to download videos, social media and music. According to a 2011 Global Business T ra vel Association study sponsored by Concur , 91 per cent of business tr avelers use laptops, 81 percent use wireless broadband, 73 per cent use per sonal smartphones, and 67 percent use mobile tr av el apps on their phones. Fo r hotels, one of the lar gest investments can be adequate bandwidth. It s the idea of having services at your nger tips, literally , said Phil Sch wartz, chief marketing of cer of Intelity , a s oftware company in Orlando, Florida, that focuses on the hospitality industry . Intelity employs software called ICE, Interactive Customer Experience, that is customized for hotel apps. It has reached almost 500 hotels internationally, he said. The software allows hotel guests to interact digit ally with the hotel thr ough their phones, tablets or laptops on 35 different services, lik e setting a time for a wake-up call or requesting a toothbrush fr om housekeeping. We inst alled high-speed Internet rst, then Wi-Fi and extended bandwidth mor e than a y ear ago, said Pierre-Louis Renou, gener al manager of the Sofitel Washington DC La fayette Square hotel and a member of the Sofitel technology c ommit tee. Sofitel manages 120 hotels global ly. T he Hotel Sofitel So Bangkok, which opened in mid-March, goes further with iP ads in all suites and common areas and Mac minis in every room. Jo hn R. Hach, senior vice president for global product management at TravelClick, a hotel service pr ovider in Ne w York, said that hotels with optimized Web sites were capturing 10 percent or more of their reservations from mobile devices. Or, as Mr. Ramos of Chancel lor Hotel put it, Yo u dont want to be left behind.

PETER WYNN THOMPSON FOR THE NYT

As a regular guest, David Stahl, president of Crowd Magnet, receives free wireless in his room at the Westin OHare in Chicago.