The Seaport Hotel, a tech-savvy meetings property, recently unveiled an in-room device that provides guests with direct web access and allows them to make phone calls via the Internet.
Dubbed Seaportal, the touch-screen monitor, wireless mouse, and wireless keyboard system features a web browser and also information services for the hotel and surrounding area. Seaport intends to equip all of its 426 rooms with the complimentary amenity by year end, and there are plans to add meeting group functionality to Seaportal, which is currently installed in about 75 rooms.
Using on-screen icons, guests can access a full browser with parental controls, a phone application for making U.S. calls toll free, as well as hotel services and a local destination guide with a mapping and directions feature. One advantage is that guests, rather than leafing through the hotel's compendium book, can find concierge and other services on Seaportal and call them by pressing an icon instead of having to dial an extension. Another is that business travelers don't need to open up their laptops to check e-mail or do work over the Internet.
Seaport is also set to launch a portal on its website, www.seaportboston.com, where meeting planners will be able to manage their group information, such as rooming lists and program agendas, and upload news and information for attendees before their events. But since the portal will be accessible through Seaportal, planners will be able to communicate to attendees about on-the-fly changes during the event. Meanwhile, an icon-driven calling capability between group members is in the works, and eventually attendees will be able to receive on-screen messages from hotel staff.
Since its launch early this year, Seaportal's biggest draw has been in-room web access, followed by a customized weather banner that can show conditions in Boston and the guest's hometown, the local area guide, and Internet telephony — though Jim Carmody, the hotel's VP and general manager, expects the latter will grow fastest because of its free long-distance calling.
Internet telephony also benefits the Seaport. Because many guests now make in-room calls on their cell phones, landline phone service has gone from being a profit center to a cost center for the hotel, said John Burke, VP of technology. The long-term plan, he said, is to evaluate the technology's potential because of its lower toll rates and operating costs.
"Initial indications are that guests really like the Seaportal technology," said Carmody, who noted that it was developed with feedback from business travelers and meeting planners. "We didn't develop the technology for technology's sake, but rather to add to the guest experience."
Meanwhile, in Washington, DC, Marriott International has begun installing "communications centers" that allow guests to connect their laptop computers and other digital devices with their rooms' flat-panel television sets.
By year end, Marriott plans to install the new technology in about one-quarter of its guest rooms — at its Marriott, JW Marriott, and Renaissance hotels in the U.S. and Canada. The company claims that the three brands will be the first in North America to offer digital communications centers in all guest rooms when the deployment is completed by the end of 2009.
At the heart of the new system is a connectivity panel, into which guests can plug their camcorders, digital cameras, digital game players, MP3 players, and iPods as well as their notebook computers. The panel is connected, in turn, to a 32-inch high-definition LCD television equipped with a 25-watt stereo speaker system. Guests can split the screen to work from their computers while watching TV. They also can listen to their MP3 players and iPods through the speaker system.
"Today's hotel guests typically travel with many digital devices besides laptops, so providing more than high-speed Internet access and Wi-Fi is a must," said Bob McCarthy, president of Marriott's North American lodging operations.
The response to the technology during test-marketing was "overwhelming," said McCarthy. "This type of in-room technology was critical to them."
The deployment began in early March at the Marriott San Francisco, a 1,500-room convention hotel, to coincide with a conference of general managers for Marriott's full-service hotels. Deployment at other meetings properties includes the New York Marriott Marquis Times Square; the Renaissance New York Hotel Times Square; the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, in Washington, DC; the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center; the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort and Spa, in Phoenix; and the Camelback Inn, a JW Marriott property in Scottsdale, AZ.