On-line and unplugged

Alexander Graham Bell supposedly once said: "Communications systems may come and communications systems may go, but wiring is forever." Give Bell his due - he started one technological revolution but perhaps it was asking too much of him to predict another.

This is because wires, it is emerging, may not be forever after all. Not so long ago, a portable phone was the size of a house-brick and not much lighter - now hotels are seeing vastly reduced revenue from in-room phone calls because many guests, especially business travellers, are carrying pocket-sized mobile phones.

All on the move

But wireless technology is not just about making phone calls on the move. Combined with the Internet, it's a way for business travellers to read their e-mail, research information and make reservations - in fact, do everything as if they were sitting at their desks in their offices, but do it all while on the move.

So what exactly does "wireless" mean? For a mobile phone, it means connecting to a network without plugging into an access point; for a laptop computer, it could mean connecting to the Internet without using a telephone wire, or using peripherals such as printers and monitors without having to connect them with a cable.

While many wireless applications are in their infancy, technologies develop so rapidly these days that there are issues that hoteliers should be considering now so that they are not caught out in the very near future. Danny Hudson, vice-president of distribution systems for Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide, believes that a good starting point, as always, is to consider the guests' needs first.

"What are our guests looking for?" he asks. "What are those guests expecting in their personal and business lives, and therefore what are they expecting from our hotels? We need to make sure that we are delivering the technology services that our guests expect, because they've started using them widely in their own environments and so require them in a hotel also."

This is not a new idea but it is becoming an increasingly important one. For instance, a hotel could at one time charge for the use of a TV but, as everyone came to have one or more TVs at home, they naturally expected the free use of one in hotel rooms. Now, as more and more travellers are carrying devices such as mobile phones, laptops, or hand-held devices such as a Palm Pilot or Psion Organiser, they expect to find facilities to accommodate them in the hotels where they stay.

Let us consider in-room technology first. One word that will become increasingly common over the next few years is "Bluetooth", the name given to a developing industry standard relating to wireless connections.

The Bluetooth technology concerns radio connections between devices such as laptops and printers, allowing them to interact without cables. As with all new communication technologies, its growth is expected to be phenomenal, with global sales turnover non-existent in 1999, but accelerating from $37m (£26m) this year to an estimated $700m (£495m) by 2006.

Industry standard

The key to Bluetooth's probable success is that it is an industry standard - 1,500 companies belong to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, including Microsoft, IBM, Ericsson and Nokia, and all have agreed to stick to this one specification.

What does this mean for hoteliers? The first so-called "killer application" for Bluetooth will be the ability to connect a mobile computing device, such as a laptop or Palm Pilot, to a mobile phone. So, bang will go the revenue from Internet access points in the hotel rooms.

Unfortunately, that's not all. As Bluetooth catches on, all the peripherals that the hotel provides, such as printers, faxes and monitors, will need to be Bluetooth-enabled so that whenever the guest presses "print" on his laptop, the document comes out without the guest having to touch the printer.

Bluetooth has its problems, though. It has a short range of only 10m, and there are limitations to the amount of information that can be transmitted, but given its backers such problems should be ironed out quickly.

Doubts

Starwood's Hudson has some doubts, however. "Hotel rooms, in many instances, are divided by very thin walls," he says. "The thing that the proponents of Bluetooth haven't been able to tell me yet is whether, if two desks are separated by just six inches through that wall, could I end up printing something in the room next door?"

The logical extension of the wireless hotel room is the wireless hotel. A Local Area Network, or LAN, can be created so that wireless devices can be used throughout the property. For the guests, this means that, via a simple plug-in device given out during check-in, they can use their laptops anywhere in the hotel and still connect to the Internet.

LANs have benefits for hoteliers, too. A wireless LAN could mean each member of staff is issued with a Palm Pilot-style multi-functional device. Connected to the central reservation system, this could be used to help greet guests as they get out of their taxis and check them in, or go to their table during breakfast and check them out. It could also be used by waiters to take orders in the restaurant, by housekeepers to log room inspections, and in many other applications.

Instantly dispatched

In theory, a guest could stop any member of the hotel staff in the corridor and do anything from reporting a broken window to booking a table for dinner, and be sure that the information is instantly dispatched to the relevant person.

This is all very new, and may seem likely to take some time to become a reality. However, the growth of new technologies riding on the back of the Internet means that everybody should be considering such possibilities now. That raises the common question: "What's the point of installing new equipment if it's just going to be obsolete in two years?"

Hudson says: "We have a lot of hotels that we're building at the moment, and we're still putting in conventional telephone systems and wires up to the rooms - but we're putting wireless infrastructures in there as well.

"The problem you have is that a lot of travellers are, or will be, using these things - but not all of them. Until all of them are using a common device, you can't remove other access methods. Could you ever imagine saying to a guest, ‘Hey, look, if you want to make a telephone call we have a business centre down in the lobby where we have real telephones'."

Potential

The potential for wireless technologies in hotels is enormous, both to enhance the guest's experience and to increase the efficiency of staff operations. There are devices available now that could come straight from Star Trek. The Anoto Pen, for instance, works as a normal pen but, as the user writes, its internal computer recognises and stores the text. An in-built transmitter then uses Bluetooth to send that text to a printer, e-mail program, fax machine or laptop.

"There may not be one wireless solution that provides the reason that you need to justify the implementation of wireless technologies in your buildings," Hudson concludes, "but if you add them all up and put them together, you'll come up with a pretty compelling argument. I think it will make the work environment easier, but the challenge we'll have is to work out what practical implications it might have in the hotel environment."