Mtg. Planners' Interest Wanes In Hotel Videoconferencing

Despite a flurry of interest in the immediate wake of last year's terrorist attacks, corporate meeting buyers, for the most part, have not maintained an interest in hotel-based videoconferencing. Consequently, some vendors have shifted focus and are deploying resources to Internet-based conferencing, allowing corporations to archive and transmit data to multiple sites. In any event, the age of meeting planners selecting hotels based on videoconferencing seems to be unlikely to fully take off.

Properties equipped with videoconferencing capabilities occasionally are seeing it used, primarily for sales meetings and product launches, but the corporate users usually are those who are frequent users of videoconferencing at their corporate sites.

Hilton Hotels & Resorts has equipped six of its American properties with the capability, and though officials said usage spiked immediately after Sept. 11, utilization levels in January sunk to about where they were before the attacks. "Anecdotally, after Sept. 11 there was some more videoconferencing, but there was supposed to be a tremendous movement to videoconferencing, and I just don't think that's happening," said Steve Armitage, senior vice president of sales. "I'm glad we have the option at a handful of hotels, but I just don't see it. Right now, Webcasting is growing faster than videoconferencing."

The most significant drawback to the hotel-based technology is cost.

"The return on investment just wasn't there," said Sam Lunetta, director of event technology at the Renaissance Worthington Hotel in Ft. Worth, Texas. "Though inquiries are increasing now, people have been leery of pricing issues. The cost of running an ISDN line in the continental United States is not bad, but overseas can cost hundreds of dollars per hour."

Also blaming cost is Herb Osdroff, president of Innovative Business Centers, a Hollywood, Fla.-based company that has equipped three Starwood properties—the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa of Hollywood, Fla., the Westin Harbour, Castle of Toronto and the Sheraton Centre Toronto—with videoconferencing services.

"It can cost a fortune at some sites," Osdroff said, "at $365 per hour at each end in some places, and even at $200 per hour, you can fly quite a few people for the cost."

Despite the talk of videoconferencing's impending popularity last fall, Osdroff said it never translated into actual gains. "It's not the case at all," he said. "None of the three hotels where we put in equipment have had anywhere near the videoconferencing that everyone thought there would be."

Lunetta said hotels are not pulling in many new users of videoconferencing, but those who are familiar with the technology still are using it.

"Most corporations that come to our property are prior users of videoconferencing and have done it in their own offices. Corporate meeting buyers are always interested in cost-effectively increasing the scope of their meetings, because you can only fit so many people into a ballroom," Lunetta said. "Pharmaceutical companies have invested very heavily in their own videoconferencing infrastructure and are very savvy in the use of conferencing in their meeting environments, and come to us to bridge to multiple sites or other hotels."

Corporations incorporate videoconferencing into their programs at the Renaissance Worthington about once a month, Lunetta said, a figure that has doubled in the past year.

Lunetta said that most pharmaceutical meetings that include the Renaissance's videoconferencing capabilities usually are small and planned within a year. Often, he said, these are sales meetings. "There was a lot of guesswork with videoconferencing three to five years ago, but corporate clients are not as leery as they were in the past," Lunetta said. "One of our clients even brings in their own Polycom videoconferencing units."

The Renaissance Worthington is equipped with ISDN lines and T-1 connections, enabling IP—or Internet-based—conferencing, in which more and more clients are developing an interest, Lunetta said. "People are looking to utilize that for small meetings or satellite rooms," he said.

Osdroff's company instead has turned to video streaming over T-1 lines, which can transmit meeting information from any conference room, allow the planners to upload the conference onto the Internet and allow attendees worldwide to access that content. "They can archive it or replay it at the hotel or somewhere else," he said.

The company only has hosted this type of technology for a little more than one month, but Osdroff is optimistic about its future. "We want to offer services to hotels that they can't provide themselves. We've come across demand for this type of video, and the secret is a huge investment in the hardware we've made. It would cost a hotel a fortune."