Checking In At Asia's Wireless Hotels
May 25, 2004
By Carolyn Oei
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This was a timely and expected development in view of the fact that Asia has one of the highest penetration rates of wireless technologies in the world.
Wireless trendsetters
According to Tim Crowley, senior analyst of broadband markets and technologies, IDC Asia-Pacific, the availability of wireless services in hotels is only beginning to be looked upon as an expected feature as far as guests are concerned. He says, "It's currently more a value-added service, particularly for business users."
Nonetheless, more and more hotels are investing the time and money to develop wireless capabilities. And this move towards a wireless environment isn't driven independently by the hospitality industry. In Singapore, for example, endorsement of wireless initiatives comes also from key government agencies.
The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) is extremely supportive of wireless projects undertaken by the nation's hotels. Under its Tourism Development Scheme (TDAS), STB provides financial assistance to hoteliers and other companies in the tourism trade as an incentive for them to develop new and innovative world-class tourism products.
Taking the tourism industry into the high-tech age is but a part of the Singapore government's push towards increasing the island's profile as a major wireless hub in Asia. STB's efforts are in collaboration with the Infocomm Development Authority's (IDA) wireless program called Wired With Wireless.
Ms Wei Chan, manager of hospitality business with STB says, "To date, we have more than 10 hotels that were awarded the TDAS grant. These include The Grand Hyatt, The Royal Plaza on Scotts, M Hotel, The New Otani and the Meritus Group of hotels, just to name a few."
The Grand Hyatt Singapore, one of the country's major business hotels, recently put the finishing touches to a S$1million "Total Technologies" upgrading project that boasts an advanced high-speed network. At the heart of the project is a Cisco-powered infrastructure that drives capabilities such as WiFi, high quality broadband, and advanced conference facilities. This is good news for the hotel's business traveler guests who make up 75% of its clientele.
Running on Cisco's Gigabit Ethernet network, guests can access the Internet from anywhere in the hotel, whether via wired or wireless connections. On the events and conferences front, all meeting rooms are connected to a sub-server room, which also doubles as the client's own on-site technician's office, where servers, routers and other administration equipment can be set up.
Upgrades were also made to the hotel's F&B point of sale and restaurants reservations systems, and its internal operations tracking system.
On the main applications currently in use, Mark Kendall, the Grand Hyatt's area information systems manager (South East Asia), says, "Guests predominately use the wireless system for checking of email, connecting to their company's VPNs and Web surfing. The future applications to be utilized by hotel staff will be F&B order taking, Job & Task Management, issuing, receiving and updating jobs, and (with the infrastructure in place, there is also) great potential for VoIP applications."
Although the project is only 85% completed at the moment, Kendall is optimistic about the potential benefits to be had from the investment. He says, "By becoming a wireless provider, we have created a revenue generating opportunity for the hotel, while at the same time delivering a positive brand contact for our guests. (As far as internal operations are concerned), once we have launched the new applications incorporating the wireless technologies, we do expect an increase in productivity."
Other Hyatt hotels in the region that are serving guests wirelessly include the Grand Hyatt Shanghai, Grand Hyatt Taipei, and Park Hyatt Sydney.
The Taj Exotica (of the Taj group of hotels) in South Goa, India, not only provides guests with WiFi broadband access for surfing the Internet and checking email, its solution also allows guests to send print jobs wirelessly to the hotel's business center. The beach-front hotel is the first in Goa to provide the service, powered by Cisco Systems. The second phase of the wireless project will see the introduction of applications such as Wireless Folio Inquiry and Messages. The new applications will enable guests to review their hotel bills online, and retrieve important messages sent by hotel staff, while sipping cocktails on a veranda overlooking the Arabian Sea.
More than guest services - Linking internal operations wirelessly
Another group of hotels that is implementing wireless is is Meritus Hotels and Resorts (Meritus). The company's primary aim was to link its three hotels in Singapore – Mandarin Singapore, Marina Mandarin, and Meritus Negara - to centralize key operations such as computer systems support, data consolidation and research, and purchasing.
The obvious options open to it were connectivity via dedicated leased lines, which would have been expensive, and the more economical but slower ADSL route. A wireless alternative was only seriously considered when a 2.4Gigahertz band for use by WLANs and short-range Bluetooth-enabled devices was made available by the IDA.
Deployment issues such as establishing a line-of-sight WLAN between the three hotels were solved with the Cisco Aironet 350 Series Wireless Bridge.
The Aironet 350 is designed to connect two or more networks (located in different buildings) at up to 11 Mbps speeds and with a range of up to 40.2 kilometers.
John Quah, corporate director of projects, Meritus Hotels and Resorts, says, "The Wireless Bridge Solution represents a one-time investment with minimal recurring costs, while the ADSL or leased line solutions can easily cost thousands of dollars in terms of monthly charges. On that basis alone, the payback period for the Wireless Bridge solution is already ahead."
With this project successfully up and running, Meritus plans to drive other IT initiatives such as e-procurement, IP telephony and in-house wireless solutions.
Carolyn Oei is a freelance writer based in Singapore.
