Hotels are ramping up their tech amenities to provide international standards, particularly when it comes to in-room entertainment and office functionality, says Sapna Kulshrestha.
Advanced technologies have become a critical component of hospitality today, with hotels increasingly investing in technology to provide world-class services to their guests.
As Delhi architect Menka Sehgal, Adlakha & Associates explains: “Hotels are placing a high emphasis on technology as it helps them reduce costs, cut down on manpower, and market themselves better in India and overseas.”
Guests today expect hotel rooms to offer personalised facilities. Additionally, technology developments in hospitality are increasingly aimed at placing more power at a guest’s fingertip.
Thus, guestrooms now include high-definition displays, sophisticated sound systems, and single source control units that integrate entertainment systems with other guestroom amenities, helping to control one’s personal environment.
Today the in-room entertainment medium offers high-definition broadcasts, video-on-demand (VoD) equipment, as also digital audio docking stations.
Another in-room incentive that many luxury hotels like Marriott International offer is a remote jack device, which can be plugged into a camera, an iPod or a laptop, by the guest.
The Taj Mahal Palace and Tower, Mumbai, has introduced Neos iTV, which allows travellers to simply connect and play back personal music, videos or photo slideshows, via the guestroom TV.
A proliferation of devices such as PDA’s, portable DVD players, and MP3 players, means that guests want to be able to connect these with their in-room systems.
Novotel Hotels in India offer MediaHub (in collaboration with Samsung), that gives guests the ability to experience their music, videos, and other multi-media content from their own personal portable device on the room’s HDTV. Says a Samsung company spokesperson: “It comes in two versions – an active unit that automatically senses the guest plug-in device, and a passive unit that allows guests to select the inputs by tuning to a designated TV channel.”
Hotel management at the Renaissance Hotel, Mumbai, claims that guests are not only provided Wi-Fi access, but that every room comes equipped with a multi-purpose IP phone that can serve as a map, and a weather forecaster, as well as a virtual concierge.
The hotel also has gadgets like gaming consoles, Sony PlayStation and the Nintendo Wii, for its guests. Similarly, the Royal Orchid Brindavan, Mysore, also provides gaming consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox, on a complimentary basis to its guests during their stay.
The most important goal for the hospitality sector is the creation of a certain experience for its guests, therefore, smart tools that allow greater control of a guest’s environment are becoming a rage in the hotel industry.
Remote Technologies Incorporated (RTI) universal remote control with Shuttle media server is one such product that controls a room’s audio, video, lighting, and HVAC, among other things.
VK Tanwar, business development manager, Adrett Homes, Delhi adds: “Whether it’s creating the right mood lighting, or ensuring that the music includes a guest’s favourite songs, or that the volume of the TV is automatically dropped when the phone rings, each of these can now be controlled and even, personalised”.
But these are not just high-tech gizmos for entertaining guests; hotels are banking on such devices to save money and attract new guests as well.
Interactive digital platforms in the guest room provides hotels with a channel for commerce and communication, while, by automating the lighting, heating, and cooling systems to shut off when a room is empty, hotels can cut energy costs significantly. Agrees Sehgal: “Energy costs, that are a hotel’s main operational cost area, are being bettered with the latest technology.”
Ginger hotels, a Tata Enterprise, which has pioneered a new concept of ‘Smart Basics’ in hospitality, has introduced the latest Touch-screen kiosks that scan credit cards and spit out room keys, thereby reducing staffing costs.
As Prabhat Pani, CEO Roots Corporation Ltd, a subsidiary of The Indian Hotels, says: “Technology allows our customers to cruise through their entire stay with minimal human intervention”. Rajiv Puri, senior director, projects and design, Marriott Hotels India Pvt Ltd, adds: “Courtyard by Marriott worldwide offers GoBoard – a large-format touch screen that gives guests convenient, real-time access to news, weather, and travel information, and has features such as interactive maps.”
Also coming up on the Indian hospitality scene is the most advanced guestroom technology, ‘Contro4’, that can not only provide personalised automation such as room lights switching themselves on as guests near their room, but will also offer climate control, music, wake-up calls, and more.
Furthermore, its green settings will even tell you how often the linen is changed. Another innovation is the Microsoft Surface, a multi-touch screen table that is useful to interact with a virtual concierge; as per Umesh Dubey, senior business manager, Vectorform, software developer company for MS Surface: “Companies plan to use it for better customer interaction.”
However, the challenge for hotels lies in making sure guests are comfortable using technology, and do not have to struggle with products that are too complex.
Puri puts it in perspective: “Use of too much automation of guest rooms and excess technology sometimes can baffle not-so-tech savvy guests, and hotels may also lose the human touch, so it is necessary to create an environment that’s more like home.”
Since the category of business travelers has been growing steadily, not surprisingly, hotel conferencing facilities too are getting tech-savvy. So plasma screens, drop-down projectors, wireless, or Wi-Fi networks, have become the rule rather than the exception, in meeting rooms across luxury hotels in the country.
Burjor Kothawalla, senior associate, Venkataramanan Associates concurs: “Wi-Fi technology is increasingly making cabling redundant.” At The Gateway Hotels, a mid-segment brand of the Taj Hotels, guests can avail wireless internet anywhere in the hotel premises with a single click log-in process. Similarly, all The Park hotel properties are Wi-Fi enabled for guests’ convenience.
The conference room’s innovative technology has, in fact, become the key differentiator for hotel sales.
A standard in audio-visual systems for most hotel conference rooms now is a digital projector with state-of-the-art mobility, wireless features, and a dedicated computer, whilst peripheral whiteboards can print, save, store, and group, all that is written on their surface as digital information.
Meeting rooms at The Park, Kolkata, for example, have Interactive Whiteboards (Panaboard) that are large, touch-controlled screens which work with a projector and computer, and allow presentations to be controlled from the board itself. Says Ajay Madan, business head, Panasonic, about their product Elite Panaboard: “This offers a solution to enhance presentations and make them effective and engaging”.
In fact, with the rising trend of video conferencing, many hotels have now introduced expensive, high-end video-conference systems which include specially designed rooms with multiple cameras, sound-damping equipment, and high-definition video screens to cater to their corporate clients.
Abhimanyu Gupta, director, Actis Technologies, says that the mobile video-conferencing solution will add further flexibility, seamless collaboration, and ease-of-use to video conferencing.
Another new addition to the meeting room technology market is an interactive room-control system that controls most of the electronic equipment in the conference room from a single centralised location.
The Grand Maratha Sheraton Hotel offers latest conference facilities like Videoscope (VHS/Betacam/U-Matic) on request, synchronised multi-projector, multi-screen audio-visuals, and video conferencing on request.
The Taj hotels have introduced the latest ‘Telepresence’ system to provide state-of-the-art value-added services to its business customers.
As Anshul Dhingra, senior marketing manager, India & SAARC, Polycom, explains: “Traditionally, video conferencing has been one of the differentiator services provided by several hotels catering to the business segment. With the emergence of HD video and telepresence, we see more adoption of these technologies by the hospitality industry, and also the emergence of new business models for the sector.”
As a matter of fact, the implementation of video conference not only helps to enhance hospitality conferencing service levels, but the video conferencing-enabled concierge application can aid hotel guests to also interact face-to-face with remote personnel for information.
As guests become increasingly technology savvy in today’s digital world, they definitely expect more unparalleled technological advancements from their travel accommodations not only for their business interests but also to enhance their comfort and entertainment. In this scenario, customisation seems to be the key to set hotels apart from others, and make guests return for the personalised experience.
