An Office Away From the Office

Thanks to fierce competition in the $11-billion business-lodging industry, travelers with briefcases are lured by a host of trendy hotel amenities including complimentary bathrobes, good-night mints on the pillow and hangers that come out of the closet.

But such goodies aren’t enough to capture the business crowd, so many innkeepers are offering an increasing range of office services, from telex machines to foreign-language translators, that either are maintained in-house or can be mustered with a phone call.

The Century Plaza in Century City has taken that a step further with the opening this month of a “business center,” complete with personal computers and Lotus 1-2-3 software, word processors, typewriters, dictation machines, copiers, electronic mail and a staff to run it all.

Rates vary from $10 an hour for a personal computer rental (the software is free) to $25 an hour for word processing. The hotel is also building up a library of financial reference materials alongside daily newspapers and videotex, spokeswoman Georgiana J. Francisco said.

Hotel business centers--on a less ambitious scale than the Century Plaza’s--have begun to proliferate in the last several months, industry analysts say. Hyatt Corp., which was test-marketing a business facility at its flagship Hyatt Regency in Chicago, shut down the center last week at the request of its outside operator, which was unhappy with the location and light traffic, Hyatt spokeswoman Nancy Ruth said.

Francisco says the Century Plaza is operating its own center, which sets its apart from other hotels. “It gives us the control to meet the demand,” she says. “We do have the traffic. The amount of business clientele at this hotel really necessitates something of this nature.”

The Sheraton La Reina at Los Angeles International Airport has had a business center for a couple of years, says Paul Sarvello, manager of group sales.

“It used to be that if you had a notary public you were hot stuff,” he says. Noting the increasing demand for office help from travelers, the Sheraton contracted with a Los Angeles firm, the Headquarters Co., to provide business services at the hotel, Sarvello said. The center is less extensive than the Century Plaza’s, he said, but it’s “very satisfactory” and, if demand changes, so will the service. “As the sophistication of travelers evolves, hotels pretty much follow suit,” he says.

While Sheraton is keeping up with business centers and other new industry wrinkles, Sarvello points out, “with those types of things you aren’t sure if they’re trends. Why make the investment if they’re going to fade?”