Well Equipped O.C. Hotel Rooms Now Come With PCs Full of Ads
Check into a hotel in Orange County these days and along with the keys to the mini-bar, the desk agent is likely to hand you a palm-sized PC as well.
Meet the CellBook, a customized, hand-held computer that offers ads for local establishments and attractions, maps for finding them and even electronic coupons.
Press the ad for Knott’s Berry Farm, for example, and the screen will show you a freeway map that highlights your hotel and the amusement park. Touch “Steak Houses” on the restaurants page, and you might read an ad for The Arches in Newport Beach. Or tap “Shopping” and receive 10% off your purchase from a store in The Block at Orange.
There are 1,000 CellBooks available in 32 hotels and five rental car facilities in Orange County. Users sign them out with their hotel rooms or cars, with the caveat that their credit cards will be charged $150 if they lose or keep the devices.
Founded by father-and-son team Bob and Steven Holmes in Mission Viejo, CellBook Inc. hopes to expand its service soon into San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and to the East Coast.
The company gets its revenue entirely from advertising. The service is free to lodgers and the hotels that offer it. Hotel employees can earn $1 to $2 in bonuses for every device they check out to a customer.
Ads cost about $360 a month for countywide service but less for local businesses that are interested in advertising to guests at only one or two specific hotels.
Bob Holmes, vice president of CellBook, said that by next week visitors who own hand-held PCs using the Windows operating system will be able to download CellBook’s Orange County information directly from the Internet onto their own devices. And the programs will be compatible with the Palm operating system by the first of the year.
The devices are basic hand-held PCs but have a specialized rubber frame that snaps on the front to act as a guide to the four-button keypad.
The CellBook is also available at the Anaheim Visitors’ Bureau.
Karen Alexander covers high technology for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-5637 or at karen.alexander@latimes.com.
