The Wow Factor

Computerworld - When the Mandarin Oriental in New York opened in November 2003, the flagship property had invested $40,000 per guest room for technology services. "There is nothing that we don't have in those rooms," boasts Eric Cruz, IT director at the 251-room hotel.
He's right. There are flat-panel LCD televisions in bedrooms and bathrooms, Cisco voice-over-IP telephones for voice and data communications, in-room faxes and printers, Xboxes and video games, desk-side multimedia panels to plug in digital cameras, PCs, Apple iPods, wireless high-speed Internet access, DVD and CD players, wireless keyboards to turn televisions into monitors and Bose docking stations to amplify MP3 players.
"What we have implemented will be the standard for all our new properties from now on," says Cruz.
At the crux of the design is the blueprint for a fully integrated voice and data network that runs over IP. Hong Kong-based Mandarin Oriental International Ltd. expects the technology to last for the next eight to 10 years.
Hotels are moving into the 21st century, electrifying rooms with enough of a high-tech "wow" factor to keep guests coming back. With more than 15 million North Americans subscribing to Digital Subscriber Line service, hotel executives know they must offer computing and communications services on par with what guests use in their homes and offices.
In additional to guest-room enhancements, fundamental computing and networking changes are reshaping office operations in the $16 billion U.S. hotel industry. Hotels are chucking older systems in favor of Web-based applications that integrate data so employees can obtain a guest profile without looking up 30 different files across 30 applications, says Doug Rice, president of Hotel Technology Next Generation in Inverness, Ill. Nine hotel IT executives formed HTNG in 2003 to encourage their peers and vendors to work together to successfully provide hotel technology. Key players include Marriott International Inc., Global Hyatt Corp. and Mandarin Oriental.
"The problem in our industry is that there are so many fragmented buyers and suppliers," Rice says. "A hotel can have as many as 50 different systems, and none of them talks to each other."
The primary hotel applications center includes property management, customer reservations and call center systems, he says. "When these systems are not connected, it's interface hell."
And progress takes time. "It took 30 years to create the problem; correcting it won't happen overnight," Rice says.
HTNG has organized working committees to address interoperability issues in cooperation with Washington-based Open Travel Alliance Inc., a similar industry group for the travel business.
No one knows exactly how