Beyond Hot Spots

Wireless hot spots have become almost standard equipment for hotels catering to the business trade, and even for some leisure resorts. Now hotelier's attentions are focused on adding value to their wireless guest offerings to keep ahead in the differentiation game. They're also beginning to tap that infrastructure for back-of-the-house applications.

For executives at Hotel Valencia, one of six Valencia Group properties, there was never a thought to not being wireless. The new property is a part of Santana Row, a 42-acre innovative retail and residential community in San Jose, California, that's completely wireless. Hotel Valencia offers free Internet access to all guests and meetings, wirelessly in public areas. "You can continue access as you walk out the door," thanks to the community-wide coverage, notes Matthew Nuss, Hotel Valencia executive vice president.

Its choice of vendors for the project was no accident. Hotel Valencia chose Cisco (www.cisco.com) and Hewlett-Packard (www.hp.com), which together account for 160,000 room nights annually in the Silicon Valley area.

Test check-in

Now Hotel Valencia is testing remote wireless check-in, equipping doormen with PDAs that access the property's Micros (www.micros.com) property-management system and enable credit-card swipes and key generation right at curbside. Food and beverage servers may get similar devices next year.

Extending wireless services was also on the minds of the operators of the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport and the Hilton Garden Inn brand when they added wireless printing.

Guests at Hyatt San Francisco Airport can access a website set up by PrintMe (www.printme.com) from their laptops or PDAs to securely route documents to the business center from anywhere in the 800-room, totally wireless facility. There, they can be printed and even submitted for high speed copying or collating, for $0.50 per page. Guests can rest assured their documents are secure. "A document never prints unless there is an ID and password," explains Larry Builta, senior director of engineering. "If the document is not claimed in 24 hours it dies." The service can also be used to receive guest faxes; the fact that documents are only printed on demand means the service complies with upcoming FCC rules regarding unsolicited faxes.

Since itis new, just three to five percent of guests use the service, but increases are expected, states Builta. "It's almost a requirement. Some groups require wireless," so wireless printing will naturally follow. At the same time, the property is considering an enterprise version for internal use. Hyatt executives are also pondering tapping the WLAN infrastructure for point of sale, remote check-in and employee communications.

Removing the need for guests to employ special drivers or cables to print was also important for the Hilton Garden Inn brand, which has installed wireless printing services provided by PrinterOn (www.printeron.net) in 65 of its 171 locations, with all to be installed by March 2004.  

Wireless valet

Guests at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel are benefiting from wireless functionality as well. The parking concessionaire, Parking Management, operates a wireless network from ZipPark (www.zippark.com) to provide state-of-the-art parking services.

Previously, parking attendants needed to run back and forth to the lobby to generate parking tickets for guests, slowing service. Thanks to a wireless network, attendants are equipped with portable data terminals on which they can note whether the car owner is a hotel guest, the license plate number, and whether there is any damage on the vehicle, and print a bar coded parking ticket on the spot.

The wireless connection has enabled attendants to process two cars every minute, with three a minute expected as they improve. "The payback will come in time savings, getting the cars out faster and getting more customers to come in and park," since there is no backup, says Jim Milioti, EVP and COO of Parking Management.

Wireless was the only way to go for another guest-supporting operation, energy management, for The Westin Diplomat Resort and Spa in Hollywood, Florida. "Having a wire presents a maintenance issue," says David Martinex, director of engineering. "Wireless is pretty self-diagnostic, so you know if a transponder is broken."

The 5% solution

The Westin Diplomat deployed a wireless energy management system from InnCom Internat-ional (www.inncom.com) system at 300 of its 998 rooms so far, monitoring energy usage in those rooms online via an infrared connection, which carries data to and from the thermostat. About 80 percent of the property's rooms feature patio doors that open to the ocean, creating huge energy issues. Martinez hopes the system will reduce its $3 million annual energy bill by 5 percent.

The hotel is testing the same wireless infrastructure for mini-bar monitoring, housekeeping and maintenance applications, says Martinez.

Wireless housekeeping management is already in use at Pacific Terrace Hotel, part of the seven-unit Bartell Hotels chain in San Diego. Housekeeping staff are equipped with Compaq (www.compaq.com) iPaqs running software from V-Link Hospitality (www.v-link.net).

Supervisors assign staff to rooms via their iPaqs and communicate on the units throughout the day, so rooms can be juggled in the queue to meet guest needs, improving guest service, efficiency and productivity.

At the small boutique Pacific Terrace Hotel, General Manager Bob Kingery saw a 25 percent reduction in the time housekeeping supervisors spent making assignments and communicating changes to staff, using handhelds. Pacific Terrace is a 73-room luxury leisure hotel, part of the Bartell group.

"We're a luxury hotel. Everyone wants to check in at 8 a.m. and check out at 4 p.m.," Kingery says. "It is important we know the status of every room as soon as it is available."

Their solution consists of the JiHi (Just-in-Time Housekeeping Integrated) software from Palm Hospitality and the Hewlett-Packard iPAQ Pocket PC with wireless and expansion packs. Each housekeeper carries an iPAQ and reports the status of vacant rooms to the front desk so guests can move in right away.

The JiHi software also cuts the time required to account for mini-bar use by 65 percent, Kingery says. He expects to roll the system out to the maintenance staff next.

Amortizing the cost of wirelessly enabling a hotel for guest Internet access through operations applications appears to be the answer for executives finding the fee-based Internet service model no longer viable. As more applications come to market, operators are expected to embrace wireless across their operations as well.