More and more, business travelers rely on the Net as offices they can take with them anywhere. And high-end hotels are amping up their connectivity and their high-tech support staff to accommodate them.
An experiment in providing guests with an on-call "technology butler" in a Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Kuala Lumpur turned out so well, the chain is going to import the position to its branches in the US, says Stephanie Platt, director of corporate communications.
The Ritz-Carlton will offer staff dedicated to helping guests access the Web, route faxes and email to their own laptops, and even configure personal software at three stateside locations, all located near centers of silicon power: Pentagon City, Virginia; Marina Del Rey, California; and San Francisco.
The chain has been offering high-tech support in its Pacific Rim locations for the last few months, after the general manager of the 248-room Ritz in Kuala Lumpur hired a Net-savvy local resident to field questions from business travelers.
"[The manager] saw that so much of his business was people who travel with their laptops," Platt says. "It was so successful, our other hotels said, 'We've got to have this.'"
Simply outfitting the guest rooms with data ports, or parking a couple of dusty, outdated machines in a drab "business center" off the lobby is not enough, Platt says. "It's one thing to have the technology available. But it's got to be backed up with someone you can call 24 hours a day."
As airlines put the squeeze on the number of carry-on bags permitted for each passenger, offering hotel guests all the virtual comforts of the home office is becoming more important. Last spring, United, Delta, and Southwest Airlines announced changes in their carry-on policies, factoring laptops into the allowance of one or two bags per flight.
In an experimental program now under way at the Hilton Towers in Anaheim, California, the Hilton Hotel Corporation is teaming up with the Unisys Corporation and software vendor ComCierge to install touchscreen-driven "virtual offices" in each room.
Guests can retrieve their email from the Web, call up breaking news and weather reports, peruse information on local restaurants and entertainment, and browse a "virtual jukebox" of popular hits.
Best of all for the globetrotting suit set, guests can also use the Essential Guest Services Network to access officeware like Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint for last-minute presentations and memos from the road.
Over the next two years, the MobileStar Network will furnish guests at more than 100 Hiltons in the US with wireless Net access. Business travelers will be given an Ethernet card at check-in that can be inserted into a guest's PC, providing a fat-pipe data link to the hotel's local area network at speeds over 10 times faster than a modem.
Hilton has also announced an "aggressive expansion" of its plan to install computing kiosks in its common areas, offering Pentium boxes with Zip drives, high-volume laser printers, copiers, fax machines, and Web access. Its "Business Anywhere" kiosks also provide telephone hotlines for 24-hour support.
"With the rapid increase in the use of the Internet by business travelers, we see an incredible opportunity to add more value for our guests by delivering innovative products and services," says Robert Dirks, vice president of marketing for Hilton.
Silicon Valley-based Teleadapt, which has built a healthy global business selling devices that allow laptop-toting execs to use foreign power supplies and phone systems, is compiling a world-wide database of hotels rated by their accommodation to the needs of the wired traveler. A portion of that database is available on the Forbes Web site as a searchable index called Rooms with a Clue.
Even some of the tonier establishments are slow to jump on the digital bandwagon, however.
A call to a representative of the MIS services department at the Plaza Hotel in New York revealed that there were two computers available for guest use -- "an Apple and a Mac" -- located in "a booth or desk with the Internet and things like that on it."
Visitors were advised to bring their own laptop and modem, "and America Online, if they want email."
