Luxury Hotels Go High Tech in Bid to Pamper Guests

When the wealthy stockbroker from London checked into the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, the desk clerk was ready for him.

She knew the names of his wife and children--and even the name of his personal secretary.

She was well aware that he expected the Wall Street Journal and New York Times delivered to his door each morning. She knew that he demanded a microwave oven and a full-sized refrigerator in his suite. She even knew that he would not accept phone calls in his room from Saturday at sunset until Sunday at sunset.

The desk clerk had not memorized the habits of this executive, but the hotel’s $250,000 computer had.

This is just one example of how high technology is helping to personalize--and improve--hotel guest service. Intense competition among first-class hotels is forcing hotel operators to try to out-automate each other with technological gadgetry that not only dazzles customers, but in some cases saves hotels money.

Some of the technologies speed up reservations and track marketing information. Others assure greater guest safety and comfort. Some save energy and others give traveling executives the use of modern office equipment outside the office.

Makes a Statement

For the executive who stays at inns crammed with high-tech equipment, “It’s a way of making a statement. It says: ‘I can afford this,’ ” said Melinda Bush, publisher of New York-based Hotel & Travel Index.

Consultants say this technology has reached leading-edge status in Orange County, where new deluxe hotels are rising at a furious pace. Because the county is such a late entrant in the big-time lodging market, many of its hotels are equipped with up-to-date technologies that older hotels simply cannot afford to retrofit.

Owners of the plethora of new luxury hotels in Orange County are “trying hard to show the world what they have to offer,” said Bush.

Here’s how:

- By tapping buttons on their bedside telephones, guests at the Hotel Meriden in Newport Beach can control everything from air conditioning and heating to the volume on their television sets.

- When housekeepers at the Anaheim Hilton & Towers finish cleaning rooms, they pick up the telephone and punch a series of buttons which immediately register the room’s availability with the hotel’s computer.

- Computers at the Alicante Princess, under construction in Garden Grove, will actually monitor how long it takes maids to clean rooms.

- When guests at the soon-to-open Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach call the front desk or room service, computers will tell hotel personnel the names of the guests registered to the room so that each caller can be greeted by name.

- At the DoubleTree Hotel in Orange, guests may soon be able to view their bills on room television screens, then check out by punching a series of coded buttons.

This scramble for hotel high technology has created a booming new market. Over the last two decades, hotel operators nationwide have installed more than $2 billion worth of high-technology equipment, according to a recent survey by the American Hotel & Motel Assn.

At least 3,000 new high-tech hotel-related products have entered the marketplace over that same period. For example, 70 different data processing systems designed for hotel and restaurant use are now on the market. Twenty-five years ago, there were none. These computers have not only improved guest service, but cut costs by speeding service and eliminating the need for night auditors.

In some cases, however, excessive use of high technology--such as automated check-outs or recorded wake-up calls--is giving the industry a reputation of coldness. “We must manage technology, we must not let technologies manage us,” said Mike Bullis, president of Wrather Hotels, owner of the Disneyland Hotel.

And at the same time, some new hotels are wasting thousands of dollars by selecting useless or out-of-date technologies. “There is more technology available than we know how to absorb,” said Larry Chervenak, president of Chervenak, Keane & Co., a New York-based hotel consulting firm.

Nationwide Attention

Still, many of the high technologies at Orange County’s splashy new hotels have turned the heads of hoteliers nationwide. Some consultants contend that Orange County hotel operators are using technologies far superior to those in such major markets as New York and Chicago. In those cities, many of the older hotels simply cannot afford to update.

“I’ll tell you this,” said Ted Zachariadis, manager at Pannell Kerr Forster’s Los Angeles office, “the hotels in Orange County are more fully computerized than those in Los Angeles.”

Guest security is one of the areas in which high-tech equipment is playing a key role. A recent industry survey revealed that security has emerged as the No. 2 concern of hotel guests--edged out only by concern about room prices.

As a result, safety systems that were once designed to save property have been redesigned to save lives. “Hotels now want to overwhelm guests with security,” said David Brudney, a Palos Verdes hotel consultant.

The Emerald of Anaheim has installed a $1-million computerized fire alarm system that can immediately pinpoint any fire in the hotel and warn guests of the danger through a network of intercoms placed in all rooms. And so security-minded is the Disneyland Hotel, that it has stationed 20 cameras throughout the hotel grounds that are monitored on closed-circuit television screens.

At the Irvine Hilton, a guest room electronic lock system is directly tied into the front desk. The system can immediately detect if a guest’s key, a maid’s key or an unauthorized key is used to enter the room. Last year, Hilton became the first hotel chain to mandate that all of its hotels and franchises install electronic guest room locks. The systems cost about $200 per room.

Electronic Safes

One of the newest forms of guest room security is the electronic safe--now manufactured by at least nine different firms. Two years ago, the Hyatt Waikiki installed electronic safes in all 1,234 guest rooms. The electronic safes have small dials on the front into which guests punch secret six-digit codes.

The safes, which cost guests $2 a day to use, are very popular, but there is one nagging problem. “People are always forgetting the codes to the darned things,” said Hal Bradbury, the hotel’s chief of security.

Next to feeling secure, hotel guests say they like to feel pampered. A number of new technologies do just that. At the $100-million Portman Hotel, now under construction in San Francisco, guests will be able select the precise temperature of their bath water with the touch of a button.

“There’s a lot of sameness out there in luxury hotels,” said Patrick Mene, managing director. “We wanted something a little different.”

One of the latest computer innovations may eventually make hotel vending machines extinct. Next month, the Los Angeles Airport Hyatt will place refrigerators that are linked to the hotel’s main computer system inside guest rooms. The refrigerators will be stocked with beer and soft drinks, and when drinks are removed from specific slots, the charge will be automatically tabulated on the room bill.

High-tech creature comforts have also found their way into hotel televisions. One hotel in West Germany recently tested a prototype television that will allow viewers to split the screen and view two channels at once--a perfect amenity for the executive sports fan who arrives on Sunday and can’t decide which ballgame to watch.

Entertainment Centers

Another hotel chain has considered converting entire guest room walls into entertainment centers which would feature giant screen televisions. And the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim has a teleconference facility with its own production studio which can broadcast over four in-house television stations simultaneously.

But the ultimate use of television technology is the gradual evolution of the television into a full-fledged computer. In Orange County, the DoubleTree and the Alicante Princess are studying systems that would allow guests to check out via their televisions. The Sheraton Grande in Los Angeles also expects to install such a system this year, and within two years its guests will be able to make hotel, car rental and airline reservations by tapping codes into their television sets.

Industry consultants say the hotel industry’s high-tech movement began in 1963, when the New York Hilton opened with automated front desk operations. Unfortunately, that first movement was short-lived. The hotel’s computer kept going on the fritz, and with no backup system, the hotel lost billings for hundreds of guests.

Not only was the system yanked within a year, but many competitors who observed the fiasco reacted by postponing plans to computerize.

Some critics say that because of high costs of computer systems and resistance to change, lodging industry executives simply put off the inevitable. After all, even today a state-of-the-art reservations system can cost a large hotel chain up to $20 million.

Even if price was not a factor, however, 20 years ago computers were still so unreliable that the 24-hour-a-day hotel industry could ill-afford system failures like that at the New York Hilton. (Today the New York Hilton is fully computerized.)

Computerized Reservations

One chain that didn’t change course was Holiday Inn, which in 1964 was the first hotel operation to set up a systemwide room reservation system. By 1971, Sheraton Hotels developed a more advanced system, and in 1972, Hilton Hotels Corp. introduced a more flexible system that was the first to handle group bookings. By 1977, virtually every major hotel company had computerized its reservation system.

But only in the last few years have individual hotels begun to hook up all of their in-house departments to the hotel’s main computer. Three years ago, computer systems were usually limited to hotels of 300 rooms or more. But with lower costs and more practical uses, computer equipment is now found in many 100-room hotels, said consultant Chervenak. “That’s a remarkably fast change,” he noted.

The 1,500-room Westin Bonaventure in downtown Los Angeles is regarded as one of the most fully computerized hotels in the county. About 44 computer terminals throughout the hotel inform the front desk within seconds after a guest buys a drink, makes a phone call or drives a car from the hotel garage.

But not all hotels have greeted the computer with open arms. Another Westin hotel, the 400-room Westin South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, is one the few hotels in Orange County that has consciously avoided computers.

Guest reservations are alphabetically maintained on file cards--a system used by hotels 50 years ago. It isn’t high cost or computer phobia that has kept computers out of the hotel, said Robert Seddelmeyer, general manager. “We just don’t want our desk clerks so busy looking down at computers that they forget to smile at the guests,” he said.

Guests Get a Choice

Some hotels offer guests a choice of computer or human contact. Two years ago, the Hyatt Regency in Chicago was the first hotel in the country to install automated check-in and check-out machines. Guests in a hurry can come and go without stopping at the front desk. They simply slip their credit cards into one of these $30,000 machines, and presto, they’re checked out. But only 15% of the Chicago Hyatt Regency’s guests use the machines, said Earl Nightingale, general manager. “As you can see, the traveling public hasn’t gotten used to them.”

Just a few hotel chains have tested these automated machines. The New York Hilton installed two of them earlier this year. But the machines are mostly used for check-outs, not check-ins. “It’s very simple.” said Madeline Schneider, publisher of Des Plaines Ill.-based trade publication, Hotels & Restaurants International, “When people arrive at a hotel, they want humans to greet them.”

Although computers are tolerated by guests in the lobby, they do not seem to be very welcome inside guest rooms.

Personal computers were first introduced to hotel guest rooms three years ago when the Midland Hotel in Chicago placed them in 100 of its 300 rooms. Although the move brought the hotel “$1-million worth of publicity,” it didn’t bring new business, according to general manager Myron Levy.

The computers, which were seldom used and often broke down, were finally removed last year.

“Nobody really needs to use a computer in their room,” said Levy. “When we took them out, no one missed them.”