From VoiP services to giant-screen plasma television, it’s hospitality on cutting edge
Misty Harris
Sun
Once the stuff of James Bond and Mission Impossible, innovations such as iris scanners, thumb-print security and electronic butlers are now being used to secure the loyalty of Canadian travellers, especially the large percentage who travel on business.
Whether working abroad or closer to home, hotel guests are finding technology as much a part of the hospitality experience as room service and miniature soaps. From virtual concierges to Voice over Internet protocol phones, the future is just an automated check-in away.
“We’re right at the forefront,” says Anthony Pollard, president of the Hotel Association of Canada. “In most cases, guests expect [technologically equipped rooms] in the same way they would expect to see a coffee maker, amenities or a television.”
Each room in the SoHo Metropolitan in Toronto, for instance, features state-of-the-art entertainment, heated marble floors, remote-control lighting, motorized drapes, laptop-compatible safes and wireless Internet access.
Visitors to Vancouver’s Pacific Palisades Hotel can reserve their own on-site office, complete with ergonomic furniture and Murphy beds for those who like to burn the midnight oil.
Pollard says it’s all part of an industry-wide trend in which “the office becomes the hotel room.”
Nearly half (47 per cent) of all reservations are made online. Electronic access cards are being replaced by keyless entry. VoIP phones in rooms enable everything from instant stock quotes to streaming radio and global currency conversion. Wireless Internet is no longer the exception, but the rule.
“In Canada, between 65 and 70 per cent of the use of hotels is by business travellers, a little bit higher than in the U.S.,” says Pollard. “The majority of them are going into their rooms, sitting down at the desk and working.”
For the country’s $12.6-billion lodging industry, the goal is to strike a balance between business and pleasure.
At Ottawa’s high-tech Brookstreet, a favourite with the white-collar crowd, guests who conduct business on the golf course never need worry about privacy because cart traffic is remotely monitored through LED screens and global positioning.
Similarly at the W Montreal, work-related technology — including infrared keyboards, high-speed data port connectivity and multiple phone lines — is balanced with advanced entertainment systems, in-room DVD players, flat-screen TVs and magnetic elevator keys for exclusive floor access.
“Our guests are trendy and incredibly aware of what’s new and hip,” says the W’s Sabine Kadyss. “What we want for them is to get connected in a convenient and user-friendly way.”
Outside Canada, hoteliers are just as eager to please.
At the Semiramis Hotel in Greece, Toronto-raised designer Karim Rashid has outfitted rooms with digital locks, electronic message boards outside every door, cordless keyboards and broadband access through plasma TVs.
In New York, each of the Mandarin Oriental’s rooms features about $50,000 of electronics, including plasma screens, computers, iPod docks and an intelligence network that learns everything from guests’ taste in music to their food preferences.
High-flyers at Boston’s Nine Zero can conveniently access an iris-secured suite by having their eyes scanned. In Hong Kong, so-called “cyber hotels” feature such geekery as thumb-print identification, total building wireless Internet, and bedside power sockets for overnight BlackBerry charging.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
