Future Perfect, Past Tense

Date: April 24, 2007

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It’s late, and all the grumpy business traveler wants to do is collapse into eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Her cab enters the driveway of a high-end chain hotel that her company uses to put up employees away on business.

A device at the mouth of the driveway scans the cab and homes in on a computer chip embedded in a plastic card in the businesswoman’s wallet. Instantly, an unstaffed computer inside the hotel checks the traveler in as a guest, her credit card and personal information already on file.

Inside a guest room, a small wall console activates the in-room climate control and adjusts the temperature to the businesswoman’s specifications, which also are on file. A digital device, perhaps still called a TV but with substantially broader capabilities, cues up a selection of the woman’s favorite music.

At this point, the traveler is only now getting out of her cab, and a doorman greets her by name using a hand-held computer that also has scanned the woman’s “smart card.” The doorman directs the traveler to the guest quarters the computer has chosen, and the businesswoman proceeds to the room without having to stand in line or even stop by the front desk.

Once at the door to her room, she waves her smart card over a sensor on the latch. Click. The door opens, lights come on automatically, and her favorite music fills the room, which is now precisely adjusted to her preferred temperature.

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From today’s perspective, such a picture of the hotel of the future might seem like wishful thinking on the part of techno-visionaries. Yet hotel industry insiders and observers say these and other examples of high-tech wizardry are on the drawing board at major hotel chains as they strategize over the best way to secure the brand loyalty of the undoubtedly wired--or more probably wireless--guest of the future.

To that end, hotel operators are looking to use new technology to personalize the guest experience as much as possible. They are hoping that greater attention to the little things--albeit by digital means--will translate into greater revenue. One concept, for example, calls for the development of a “virtual concierge” that knows the restaurant and entertainment tastes of frequent guests and can customize a list of leisure-time suggestions in any number of cities around the world.

That and other advancements under consideration are part of an industrywide effort to bring what hotel operators call “customer service management” into the digital age, said Roger Cline, director of hospitality consulting for Arthur Andersen in New York. With the help of new technology and computerized personal profile information, Cline said, hotels hope to better anticipate the needs of frequent guests and make them feel more at home. “The hotel business is all about being hospitable, after all,” he said.

New technology appears to be an important part of that goal, given the considerable sums major chains have set aside to pursue it. Beverly Hills-based Hilton Hotels Corp., for example, has earmarked $120 million this year to support current technology at its hotels and to develop new devices to save time and labor, said Tim Harvey, Hilton’s chief information officer. Part of this money will finance a pilot program to test wireless networking in 20 of the chain’s 130 North American properties.

Likewise, investment in new technology at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. has “grown substantially and will continue to grow substantially,” said Steve Hankin, president of the technology and marketing division for the White Plains, N.Y., company. He declined to specify dollar amounts. Starwood, however, also plans to begin limited deployment this year of its own package of wireless services.

Yet while they increase spending for new technology, the major chains also are proceeding with caution, waiting for the consumer market to fully embrace the next new device or standard thing before committing themselves to it. Few, if any, hotel operators want to make the mistake of outfitting their properties with the modern equivalent of Beta videotape players.

“We certainly don’t want to introduce technology just for the sake of technology,” Hankin said.

Carl Wilson, executive vice president and chief information officer for Marriott International Inc. in Bethesda, Md., agreed. “Our job is not to push technology but to enable technology to produce a better customer experience. We could throw a lot of good capital away by investing in the latest trend in technology,” Wilson said. “We’re waiting for the push to come from the consumers. We’ll meet them wherever they are in their own personal adoption of technology.”

Interest in the computer and digital enhancement of hotels, however, isn’t geared solely toward guest satisfaction. It also is part of an ongoing effort at major chains to increase margins by cutting overhead, boosting efficiency and generating new revenue. One proposal, for example, calls for the roll-out of targeted advertising to specific guests, such as convention-goers, that would scroll across their TV screens not unlike Internet banner ads.

“I think people are getting used to being bombarded by commercial opportunities wherever they are,” Cline said.

Today, the reach of technology at most hotels is largely confined to in-room Internet hookups and lobby-side business service centers that provide guests with pay-per-use computers, fax machines and copiers.

Such equipment, which has become widespread only in the last few years, is mostly the result of surveys conducted by major hotel chains on the technology desires of frequent guests. Marriott, for example, found in one of its queries that more than 50% of frequent business travelers carried laptops or some other device to reach the Internet and favored high-speed access in their rooms. Today, all of the chain’s 370 domestic properties are outfitted with such hookups.

Like Marriott, most of the other mid-to-upper-level chains offer both high-speed and traditional modem access in their rooms to accommodate their guests’ level of technological sophistication.

Future steps in technological innovation at hotels also will probably be the brainchild of focus groups and customer preference surveys.

“By nature, hotels have to adapt themselves to be more like what we’re used to in our daily lives,” Hankin said.

Although they may not have the exact details of what the next wave of technology will be, hotel operators still have a broad sense of which aspects of the hotel/guest interface they want to enhance. Most prominent among them are check-in, guests services, and in-room entertainment and communications.

In the future, for example, guest room TVs might be replaced by something now nebulously dubbed a “digital appliance” that would serve variously as a TV, a stereo, an Internet portal and even a telephone.

Hilton, for example, is eyeing the appliance as the vehicle for an in-house digital entertainment network that would provide music, movies and other content such as prerecorded TV shows and sporting events on demand.

Check-in also is a candidate for a technological make-over. “We’re looking to find ways to push out the check-in process further away from the front desk,” Hilton’s Harvey said.

Along with smart cards, hotel operators also are considering a small key-ring wand that a guest could swipe at a computerized kiosk in the lobby for immediate check-in. The attendant-staffed front desk would still be a standard fixture in the hotel of the future, but it would serve more as a “welcome center” than a transaction counter, Harvey said.

Some technological changes, however, won’t necessarily be only for guest satisfaction. Some also are aimed at increasing operational efficiency. For example, hotel operators are looking at plans that would outfit every staff member with hand-held computers to quickly coordinate and track delivery of guest services. The devices also might allow housekeepers to determine with the swipe of a hand whether rooms are occupied.

In addition, other devices might be installed specifically to cut costs. Electricity bills are among the weightiest chunks of a hotel’s overhead, and installing devices that would automatically turn off lights and appliances when rooms are vacant could save tens of thousands of dollars annually.

Cline predicts adoption of new technology at hotels will hit larger chains first, those with 200 to 500 rooms per hotel that cater to business clients and higher-end travelers of all stripes.

He also believes hotels will absorb most of the cost of developing and installing new gadgetry rather than passing it on to guests because of the hospitality industry’s highly competitive market.

Hankin, of Starwood, predicts that most hotels will receive something of a technological make-over within five to 10 years. Already, he said, a handful of Starwood’s “W” brand hotels have begun installing Internet-enabled devices in their bars, restaurants and lobbies for guests to order food, drink and other services.

“I think hotels in the not-too-distant future will be fully Internet-enabled for communications access and for conducting basic business,” he said. “It’s an incredibly rich period of time for the application of technology to grow in the industry.”