PUTTING THE THEORY OF CONNECTIVITY INTO PLAY
by Kathy Eccles

The drywall isn’t yet up on the new 77-room Loden Vancouver hotel set to open in February 2008, and for now a complex network of portals and plugs is clearly visible behind the walls. The first new hotel to open in Vancouver in five years, the Loden bills itself as “technologically in the moment”. 

The detailed hard-wiring going in behind the walls has been designed for remote-sensing jackpack panels that will be part of in-room desks offering pre-set plug-ins compatible with most modern-day electronics including computers, iPods, PDAs, mobile phones, and digital cameras. 

Guests will be able to plug their laptops into the Loden’s 42-inch high-definition TV screens using them as giant monitors to access the Web or view everything from their next day’s presentation to complex computer animation. Guestrooms will emulate home theatres, offering a wide-ranging playbox of movies and games. A convenient baggie full of adapters will be included in the desks to allow connections for the rare cases when older devices might be incompatible with the in-desk jackpack. 

For Loden Vancouver General Manager Edel Forristal, the technology is all part of the seamless connectivity to the Internet that has become a major priority and the latest buzz phrase in the hotel industry. 

“Our philosophy is to align technology to make the guest experience seamless, efficient, and convenient. We want things to work. We don’t want guests crawling under the desk looking for connections. If they’ve forgotten a cable at home, there needs to be options,” says Forristal. “We want our guests to push ‘on’ and they’re fired up. The fewer times they have to enter logins, passwords, or credit card information, the better, or they’ll be asking, ‘Don’t you know who I am by now?’”

Kurt Pyrch, Managing Director of the Best Western Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island, agrees the main technology issue for the hotel industry today is “to offer the ability to work in an electronic world.” For guests, this will help determine where they are going to stay. “It used to be whether a hotel had access or not, and now it’s shifted to the quality of that access - how good it is,” he stresses. 

The tech savvy Pyrch also believes, “People’s need to access the web is currently outpacing business’s willingness to adapt. There is an unwillingness to factor in the expense.” 

At the Best Western Cowichan Valley, Pyrch has adapted well. He ensures there are plugs throughout the hotel common areas for guests to charge their mobile phones, and the restaurant and bar are hotspots, offering Wi-Fi access to the Internet. He’s gone a step beyond that too. “We’ve added the routers and switches and ensured we’re multiple VPN-capable to make sure people can do business.”

Offering a virtual private network (VPN) for guest use provides secure communications over unsecured networks and can greatly enhance communication for specific user groups, including clients from industries such as government or health care, who regularly trade in sensitive or confidential information. 

Chris Widmeyer, former Chief Engineer at the Fairmont Vancouver Airport Hotel, who is now Consulting Construction Manager to Fairmont Hotels, also sees the advantages of hotels providing a VPN for business clients, “There are extreme advantages to being able to log onto your own network in a seamless process. You don’t have to travel with all the plug-ins and you can work off a laptop knowing information storage is secure off base.” At the same time, he says, few hotels are VPN-equipped because of possible liability issues and the management resources needed. 

Putting the theory of seamless connectivity into practice may be easier said than done. But it remains the industry goal, because as Widmeyer’s experience shows, “Anytime you ask guests to work, satisfaction goes down. As the wireless world entered into people’s homes, their expectations of what is available from business is that much greater. People expect their experience at a hotel to be better than it is at home.”

New builds, like the Loden Vancouver, have all the advantages of pre-planning for technology. Hard wiring older buildings, particularly historic properties, can mean having to cable through asbestos as well as plaster on pipes and fire-resistant bricks. There are major structural challenges to get cable to the rooms and the costs are huge.
But when technology pays off in the pocketbook, hotels are making the investment. And one area showing major promise for payback is energy-conservation. Five years ago, Widmeyer says, few in the industry were interested in compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), because the cool blue tones of the low-energy light bulbs made guestrooms less cozy. Today, those who made the investment in CFLs are reaping the benefits on their Hydro bills. Widmeyer explains, “As hotels begin to buy into an integrated-design approach to energy efficiency, they will increasingly be able to distinguish products that are both energy efficient and guest enhancing, yet have minimal capital cost. Companies on the leading edge are thinking ahead to what the price of commodities (oil and natural gas) may be 10 and 20 years from now.”

Many hotels are already using technology in the energy-savings game and seeing rewards in the shorter term. The Fairmont Vancouver Airport Hotel uses infrared sensors as part of their HVAC systems to detect when someone has entered the room, immediately bringing the room temperature to comfort levels. Within 15 minutes of the guest leaving, the room reverts back to a preset temperature using less heating or cooling. 

While many are nervous about technology investments, fearing how quickly innovations can become obsolete, Widmeyer has seen some slowing down of technology even for new builds. He likens the pace of change to the introduction of the automobile. Once everybody is driving a car and enjoying about the same speed and function, after that it’s all about the “flash and how it looks.” When it comes to Internet access, it’s all about how easy it is to log on. 

Still, most hotels are either taking a wait-and-see attitude or playing catch up to technology that may already be anywhere from two to five years ahead. Many foresee that Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology will play a much bigger role in the hospitality industry in the future, far beyond its current function of providing automatic access to room locks. 

For now, when it comes to wireless radio frequency technology, other industries are taking the lead. You can drive into a Shell Canada station and wave your uniquely numbed RFID tag in front of a reader, pump your gas, take your receipt and go. Royal Bank of Canada and Visa Canada announced in November 2007 that they are launching a pilot project in Ontario that would “allow people to use their cellphones as electronic wallets.”

While it is easy to predict the use of RFIDs, in particular, as part of hotel loyalty programs, it’s not likely that these information-imbedded chips will be the norm until the bugs are worked out, including privacy and security concerns (one consumer’s “smart card” is another person’s “spy chip”).

In the meantime, there are the anticipated new protocols and parameters of the much-heralded Web 2.0, considered an advanced form of the World Wide Web where social interactivity is the new reality. 

The Loden Vancouver has already taken a page from the Web 2.0 playbook and launched the “Green Room”, a conversational blog where Forristal posts periodic updates, setting the stage for the hotel’s upcoming opening. 
For a sense of where technology fits into the big picture, Widmeyer is a fan of the book Mass Customization: The New Frontier in Business by B. Joseph Pine that espouses ways to customize individual customer experience on a massive scale. “It’s a big paradox, but it’s what everyone is trying to achieve,” he says. “Technology is the only effective and most unobtrusive way to achieve it.” 

Pyrch predicts that one of the next big drivers will be the need to double computer memory capacity every two years. “By then the cost will come down,” he adds. In the meantime, he advises, “Keep it simple. Forget the macro-trends and look at the micro-trends.” For the iconoclastic Pyrch, sometimes seamless connectivity means going counter trend. At his Vancouver Island hotel, he prefers to take bookings from guests personally - over the phone.