<B> Guests Get Tech Touch</B>
<I>Curbside checkin, Cell phones come to hotels</I>
By Cheryl Rosen
In the "me-too" world of the hospitality industry, two technology products debuting on a small scale promise to catch on quickly and improve the guest experience.
Borrowing a great idea from the car rental industry, the new Loews Portofino Bay Hotel in Orlando will use handheld computers to provide arriving guests with curbside checkin. In Beverly Hills, the hottest amenity is giving guests cell phones that put the hotel switchboard in their pockets.
When the Portofino Bay opens on Sept. 1, the idea is, "you pull up in your car, we punch your last name into a handheld device and swipe your credit card, and the computer prints out your guest registration card and room key, which also serves as a credit card at the hotel and Universal Studios," said general manager Crawford Sherman. "Then the same agent takes your luggage, escorts you inside, collects your key card and escorts you to your room."
The Regent Beverly Wilshire, meanwhile, "is down to the last research and contracts" of a system that will give guests a cell phone that acts just like an extension of the phone in their room. If they fail to answer a call to their room, the system will automatically forward the call to the cell phone.
"Whether they're in the dining room or out in the city," said vice president and general manager Peter O'Colmain, the system will allow guests to both accept and make calls as though they were in their rooms. The hotel plans to debut the system next month, and to charge $7.20 a day for the service.
Cell phones programmed to the room already have rolled out at The Peninsula Beverly Hills, where "hotel phones have always been a source of annoyance to our guests, whom we have nickeled and dimed and irritated for years," said general manager Ali Kasikci. "So we decided to make the telephone our guests' best friend by linking it to the guest room phone."
In addition to receiving calls, guests can use the cell phones to call the front desk or room service by just dialing their extension number. The Peninsula does not charge for the cell phone, and calls made on them are charged at the same rate as calls from the room, Kasikci said.
Usage of the phones has been steadily growing. "We used to have 15 or 20 phones," Kasikci said, "but now we have 50 or 60, and we keep calling the company and getting more. I'd say at least a third of our guests make use of them."
On the checkin side, Kasikci called Loews' concept of moving the front desk to the curb "five years behind," noting that The Peninsula has limo drivers call them when repeat guests are 10 minutes away and sends an assistant manager out to greet them with a key in his hand.
The Beverly Wilshire also has been doing curbside checkin this year, in a mix of the human touch and the technological. When 127 new rooms opened in the hotel's Beverly Wing in January, staffers at first walked guests to the other side of the property to check them in at the front desk and then walked them back. That system quickly gave way to a computer in the driveway, where the names of arriving guests are transmitted to the front desk, keys are made and the guest escorted upstairs.
Hyatt Hotels rooms division vice president Norm Canfield said while "we don't have curbside checkin in the traditional sense, we have looked at several different options, like remote checkin at the curb, at the airport and maybe even in the van. We've been focusing not only on the individual traveler but also on groups. We've experimented with kiosk checkin in the lobby and at satellite locations. Some resorts have been experimenting with airport checkin, and I think with the leaps and bounds in technology, we'll be able to identify possibilities for remote checkin. But that probably won't happen this year."
Loews' idea of bringing the credit card swipe to the curb is a neat new twist being pioneered by regional vice president Michael Sansbury and his rapidly expanding Orlando team, which includes staff for three Loews properties under construction there: the Portofino Bay, the Hard Rock Hotel, scheduled to open next year, and the Royal Pacific Resort, opening in 2001. If all goes as expected at Portofino Bay, all three will offer the service, as will other Loews properties around the nation.
With the handheld devices running about $5,000 apiece, Sherman said, curbside checkin is not about saving money. "With a hotel of this style, the object is the convenience of the guest. We are a deluxe hotel, and service is our major emphasis." Still, he acknowledged, if the service proves popular and is adopted by other chains, the price of the technology will fall, and "other hotels may see it as a labor-saving device" that will allow them to cut back on front-office staff.
The Portofino Bay plans to debut other new technologies as well, in Smart Rooms equipped with motion sensors and automated minibar and HVAC tracking. The motion sensors will detect when the room is occupied and when it is vacant, so guests will never be disturbed by housekeeping staffers or minibar fillers knocking on the door. The HVAC system will monitor room temperatures and alert hotel staff of malfunctions, which they then can correct from a central location, without the guest being aware that anything was ever wrong.
Meanwhile, guests at W Hotels, Starwood's new brand, can use an On Command system to connect to e-mail and the Internet through the room television and a remote keyboard. Installed two months ago in the W properties in New York and San Francisco, and this month in the W Atlanta, the system is proving popular despite its $9.95-a-day price tag. W Hotels vice president of sales and marketing Brian Windle estimated that 20 percent of guests are paying for the system for both of the two days they average at the property.