Hawthorn Provides Laptops

<B>Hawthorn Provides Laptops</B>

By Bruce Serlen

Hawthorn Suites late last month announced it was adding a new amenity to each of its 10,000 guest rooms in North America: a laptop computer. The installation will begin this month and is scheduled to be completed by September.

Along with the laptops, the extended-stay brand of U.S. Franchise Systems will be adding high-speed Internet access to guest rooms. In providing high- speed access via an Ethernet system, it is following the lead of the U.S. lodging industry's biggest players (see story, page 1). Driving the trend is the strong need of business travelers to be able to quickly access their e-mail messages.

"By making both the laptops and Internet access readily available to business travelers, we're really enabling them to conduct their business right from their hotel rooms," said Steve Jacobs, acting CIO of USFS.

At checkin, guests will be given a password to activate the standard package of software applications already loaded in the laptop. "They're also given an Ethernet card, which allows them to access the high-speed wireless system," said Jacobs. There's a charge of $9.95 per day for the service, an amount that has become standard industrywide.

"Though we estimate that as many as 60 percent to 70 percent of our guests may have their own laptops with them," Jacobs said, "our research indicates that many of these travelers will still want to plug in to the model we're providing since it has a flat panel screen, which is larger than many of the models travelers typically carry."

Hawthorn Suites' research also shows that business travelers are likely to use the machines to surf the Net and make online purchases, as well as communicate with their offices via e-mail. "Fifty-five percent of the travelers polled said they would use the Internet to do business-related research, compared with 45 percent who would use it exclusively for e-mail," said Jacobs. Twenty percent anticipated making online purchases.

"Looking down the road, it's easy to envision the day when computers in guest rooms are simply taken for granted," said consultant Greg Moore, director of the travel industry program at Integrated Technology Research Corp. in Wilmington, Del. "But right now it still seems like an innovation.

"It might take a few repeat stays until business travelers build up enough of a comfort level to work on their own documents with the laptops provided. But once that comfort level is there, travelers will get used to having the convenience," Moore said. "Also, being extended-stay properties, it's entirely possible that over the course of the many weeks travelers may be in residence at the hotel, there may be documents they can start and finish on the machine provided."

Already standard in Hawthorn Suites guest rooms are oversized work areas, dual phone lines, dataports and personal voicemail. Hawthorn has 100 properties presently open across the United States and has 250 additional units in various stages of development.