Marriott, Starwood Hotels To Install Telepresence Tech

Marriott International and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide today announced separate plans to introduce Cisco's telepresence remote conferencing technology to several properties this year.

Marriott is partnering with AT&T to bring the Cisco TelePresence technology to Marriott, JW Marriott and Renaissance properties in 25 cities, including Frankfurt, Hong Kong, London, New York, San Francisco, Shanghai and Washington, D.C. The company said the first meeting suites would be operational by the end of October.

Starwood, meanwhile, is working with Singapore-based Tata Communications to bring Cisco TelePresence rooms to 10 of its hotels by the end of the year. The first rooms will be in Sheraton properties in New York, Sydney and Toronto, and Westin properties at Los Angeles International Airport and Chicago. Beyond that, Starwood plans to add rooms to properties in Brussels, Hong Kong, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo and other major international business markets.

"We believe that public telepresence rooms are the key to increasing the accessibility of telepresence beyond major company offices to their wider ecosystem of users: customers, suppliers, remote workers and business partners," Tata Communications senior vice president of global managed services John Landau said in a statement. "Our partnership with Starwood is a major step towards making this vision a reality."

Telepresence technology allows small groups, generally 20 people or less, to use high-definition video and real-time audio to meet while in multiple locations worldwide. Besides companies that have the technology installed onsite, Cisco has several public rooms where the technology is available. Tata Communications has such rooms In London and Boston as well as Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Delhi and Gurgaon in India, and it also recently announced an agreement to manage a room in India. Both Tata and AT&T also have capabilities to link to private Cisco TelePresence locations.

Although telepresence technology often is viewed as a way to cut down on travel necessary for meetings, executives from both Starwood and Marriott said they expected that partnering with technology suppliers ultimately would provide a boost to their meetings business.

"As the 24/7 world economy becomes more interconnected, the need to hold small global meetings that cross continents and oceans will only grown," Marriott president and COO Arne Sorenson said in a statement. "We believe Telepresence will create more business meetings because people can travel shorter distances and easily connect with colleagues around the world."