Checking in with High-Tech Hotels
It used to be that you were in a high-tech hotel if they gave you a remote with the TV and the Wall Street Journal.
Not any more. Hotels without Internet connections and fax machines are now considered behind the curve, and hotels are now constantly upgrading their high-tech amenities.
If they haven't done it already, the major chains are quickly upgrading their rooms with at least an extra modem/fax line. Hilton, for example, recognizing that an extra phone line is now the minimum standard for business travelers, is spending $20 million to upgrade its phone systems. Anyone who's had to move furniture to find a phone jack will agree that an extra line is the single best improvement a hotel can make.
Of course, that doesn't mean that things couldn't be better. Some hotels like Hilton have even started installing the phone jacks at desk level -- a brilliant concept for the busy road warrior with a bad back.
Marriott and Sheraton hotels are introducing an Etherloop connection in some of their hotels.
The service will cost approximately $10 a night and you'll need an Ethernet port on your laptop, but once connected, the proxy software at the hotel server will automatically translate your IP address and give you access to your corporate network. The Four Seasons hotel in Austin, Texas also has a similar setup as well as T1 capabilities in every room.
Because faster is better, the San Francisco Ritz-Carlton and the Redondo Beach Crowne Plaza are currently testing a service from 4th Communications Network and @Home that connects your laptop at speeds 50 to 100 time faster than a 28k modem. The Service costs about $10 a day and its goal is to give business travelers the same kind of high speed access they have in their corporate offices. More than 50 hotels plan to provide the same service, including Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, ITT Sheraton and Weston.
If you didn't bring your laptop but still want to surf the Internet, some hotels will actually provide you with a computer and more.
The Hotel Vintage Park in Seattle Washington has 30 rooms equipped with laptops and ultra-fast IPORT connections, and the hotel can even set you up with an Internet account. If you need a video conference, the Pan Pacific Hotel in Vancouver has rooms equipped with Compaq PCs and video cameras. The rooms -- 17 in all -- are called Global Office Cyber Rooms and the cost about $30 extra.
If you can't find a Global Office Cyber Center in the city you're traveling to, or your budget will only let you book stone-age hotels, here are a few tips for getting connected:
Put together a connection kit with a phone splitter, a phone coupler, and a phone extension cord. Also get an in-line handset coupler. This device will let you connect to the handset jack instead of the wall jack (remember how you hate to move furniture) and also makes it possible to connect to a digital or ISDN phone jack.
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