Executive Travel : Productive Downtime Option

If you’ve ever been holed up in an airport and wished for a spot you could just get away from it all--a company called Ziosk Inc. in St. Petersburg, Fla., has you in mind.

Ziosks, a cross between a kiosk and an office, are free-standing, mini-hotel rooms (but without bathrooms) designed for busy parts of airports and train stations. Travelers can reserve them in advance or rent them at the door by the hour.

So far there are 11 Ziosks in operation--eight in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, two that opened this month in Chicago’s Union Station, and one in the Canada’s Thunder Bay Airport.

Ziosks are the brainstorm of Jeff and Joan Fortune, hoteliers who decided to bring the room to the traveler rather than wait for the traveler to come to the room. The Fortunes, who own several hotels in Florida, say they thought it up in 1967 but the technology that made it possible to operate such rooms from remote locations wasn’t available until recently. Ziosk was incorporated in 1990, and the first Ziosks were placed in operation in 1992.

The existing Ziosks have found their niche mostly with business travelers, although some families also use them, said Howard Braukman, director of product development for Ziosk. Company surveys show about 75% of the users are business travelers. So far about 12,600 people have either rented the units or obtained a personal identification number that allows them to easily check in.

Mike Sagara, division sales manager for United Family Life Insurance Co. in Atlanta, is one fan. Sagara spends all week on the road, frequently passing through the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport.

“It’s a real comfortable place to gather myself at the end of the work week and catch up on details,” he said. “It’s a quiet place to make phone calls, check my e-mail and voice messages, and call customers. That way the time at the airport is not just downtime.”

Airline clubs offer many similar services, but they don’t offer privacy, he said. “They tend to get a little noisy and can be a little distracting.”

The rooms have attracted a lot of interest at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, said Gordon Wennerstrom, airport property manager. “These little boxes have generated more telephone calls for me than just about anything else we’ve done in the last 10 to 15 years,” he said. “We view them as a customer service. There are customers who don’t belong to airline clubs who need something like this.”

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Another frequent customer, for example, is a medical recruiter, who flies doctors in from around the country and interviews them in the Ziosk all day, Wennerstrom said. The busier units get used about 20 times a month, although for a number of days in June Ziosk was averaging 25 rentals a day in Minneapolis. The airport receives a 10% commission on each rental in exchange for supplying the space.

Ziosks are designed to go in areas that can’t necessarily be used for other types of concessions, so it’s an extra way for the airport to make money, Braukman said. The units are also completely portable, so if the airport needs to do construction or redevelop an area, they can be wheeled to a new location.

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Not every airport has found a use for the rooms, however. Ziosk had trial units in the San Jose Airport and the Miami Airport for a year, but found that the rate of usage failed to meet the company’s standards, so they were pulled out.

The demand wasn’t there, in part because there are hotel facilities located conveniently nearby, Braukman said.

It is also taking time for the idea to catch on. Sleeping areas in airports are more common overseas. Some airports in Japan and in France, for example, have spaces specifically set up where people can easily nap. But private rooms in airports for working or sleeping remain a novelty in the United States, said Victoria Pannell, spokeswoman for the Airports Council International in Washington, D.C.

Indeed, sleeping rooms were tried at Los Angeles International Airport but were not commercially successful.

LAX had an operation called Skytel, which had eight small rooms, each with a single twin bed, a phone and a shower, said airport spokeswoman Nancy Niles. The rooms, which were in operation for between two and three years, but have been gone now about five years, were located in the international terminal and designed for people who needed a few hours rest during a layover. They were meant for sleeping, and restricted for use by only one person.

As a result, they weren’t used enough to make them cost-effective to operate, so the contractor eventually pulled them out. “We’re not a hub, or a place where people have to hang out for long periods of time,” Niles said. “We’re more of an O&D; [origin and destination] airport. That’s why it didn’t do well here.”

Also, the cost of renting the rooms for a few hours approached the cost of just getting a room across the street at the Hyatt or the Hilton, she said.

And in fact, many airport hotels around the country do offer “day rates” for people who want a place to shower and rest, but not necessarily spend the night, said Bob Dirks, vice president of marketing for Hilton.

Ziosk, however, is banking on the people who don’t want, or don’t have quite enough time, to leave the terminal.

There are two types of Ziosks. The larger model, which is about 7 feet by 9 feet, contains a desk, couch, fax machine, phone with computer access, reclining chair and television with a VCR. There’s also a clock radio with an alarm for people who need to catch a flight (or the company offers a wake-up call service). The unit rents for $12.95 for the first hour and $6.98 for each subsequent hour. (The company also offers discounts for people who use the rooms frequently.) The company may test units with showers and a toilet later.

A smaller, single-person unit is 3 feet wide, by 7 feet long. It looks like a large phone booth containing a reclining chair, work desk and the same telecommunications and electronics equipment found in the larger unit. Single units rent for a flat rate of $5.95 an hour. Since the rooms are designed for people on layovers, not as substitutes for real hotel rooms, most close at 10 p.m. and reopen again at 6 a.m.

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To use a Ziosk, the traveler picks up the phone mounted outside and receives a computer access code that unlocks the door and activates the equipment. An electronic security system monitors the spaces for break-ins, fires or malfunctions. The rooms are cleaned after each use.

In addition, airport security keeps an eye on them to discourage illicit use.

Ziosk is hoping as more people use them, word will spread to other airports, Braukman said. “We want them to be as ubiquitous as telephone booths.”