HITEC products, aim to address many hoteliers' needs

Hotel & Motel Management, August, 2004 by Bruce Adams

DALLAS -- More than 4,500 people attended the Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference at the Dallas Convention Center in June to attend professional development workshops, general sessions, exhibitor tutorials and browse the trade show floor. That's about the same number who attended last year's show when attendance was down 15 percent from the prior year.

Like most HITEC's, there was an emphasis on technology products and services provided by the 315 exhibitors. More than 68 percent of the exhibit floor is sold out for next year's show at the Los Angeles Convention Center June 20-23, 2005. Here are a few things attendees saw this year.

Guest services

Bartech Systems International offers a full range of flexible minibar solutions in the Americas. In addition to its line of fully automatic minibars, Bartech offers manual and semi-automatic systems, both of which are upgradeable, offering an easy migration path to the company's higher profit automatic systems. As part of the product line extension, Bartech also introduced a new patent-pending dual door Combo Bar with one side an automatic minibar and the other side a guest refrigerator.

CIRCLE 201

Dometic introduced the Grapevine Water Coaster, which holds a bottle of water, and monitors its movement and consumption. The coaster uses Grapevine technology that was first used in the refreshment center door-opening alert system.

CIRCLE 202

e-Touch International's Slate e-Menu provides custom graphical menus that are delivered through the in-room entertainment platform or splash page from the hotel's broadband supplier. E-Menu is a fully interactive ordering system that allows guests to take their time while they choose and confirm room-service orders and select delivery time. It is designed to reduce staff time with phone orders and door hangers, provide consistent order placement, reduce errors, confirm changes immediately and increase revenue through cross selling and up selling.

CIRCLE 203

General Dynamics Interactive's Intrigue Multimedia System will be installed by Entertainment, Media, and Telecoms Corp. of Sydney, Australia, in the Singapore InterContinental hotel and the Le Meridien Hotel Eden in Rome. These deployments mark the first presence of the Intrigue system in Singapore and Rome and will serve as the launching point for digital video-on-demand in the luxury hotel market in Asia and Europe.

CIRCLE 204

GuestOne is a digital "infotainment" system designed to redefine the in-room guest experience. Besides television and cable, it also can provide high-definition TV, digital video on demand and DVD/CD playback. It enables guests to manage their digital music and photos, and its licensed content such as games, songs and bedtime stories provides additional entertainment choices. It is designed to help generate revenue for hoteliers by enabling the sale of advertising, purchase or rental of DVDs, CDs and accessories. The multi-lingual user interface and other features enable guests to personalize GuestOne.

CIRCLE 205

Inncom debuted its variable-speed fan drive for hotel heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. The VFD-4 is designed to reduce fan noise in virtually any fan coil unit or packaged terminal air conditioner. When operated at slower fan speeds, acoustic noise is reduced and dehumidification is enhanced. The VFD-4 was developed to meet requests from hoteliers who want to reduce or eliminate guest-disturbing noises from existing HVAC equipment.

CIRCLE 206

Kasenna, a provider of broadband video solutions, demonstrated its complete, next-generation, on-demand software solution using modular, carrier-grade platforms and Intel's processors. The solution offers improved performance and flexibility by capitalizing on standards-based technology being introduced by telecommunication equipment manufacturers developing to Advanced TCA (ATCA) system specifications. Intel-830 based set-top boxes run advanced middleware to demonstrate the flexibility and power of Kasenna's solution.

CIRCLE 207

Kinetics, a developer of Internet-based airline self-service technologies in the mid-1990s, demonstrated concepts for the company's existing self-service hotel/lodging solutions, and its vision of the future: a seamless, integrated self-service channel connecting the entire travel industry. It would allow a guest to use an automated check-in/check-out kiosk in the lobby to rent a car, buy opera tickets, and check in and get boarding passes for an airline flight.

CIRCLE 208

Richard Lewis of LG Electronics USA [left] and Dave Bankers of LodgeNet Entertainment Corp. offered high-definition TV at the LodgeNet booth. LodgeNet's HDTV technology and its hotel-based SigNETure TV entertainment and marketing system are designed to leverage entertainment technology for greater revenue and personalized guest services. Bankers presented a tutorial on HDTV in which he told hoteliers that with Federal Communications Commission mandates and networks producing more content, it would be a short time before all guests expect it. He said HDTV costs are dropping. LodgeNet and FelCor Lodging Trust, a real-estate investment trust, agreed to increase by 65 percent the number of FelCor-owned rooms that will feature LodgeNet services. The new agreement names LodgeNet as the on-demand entertainment provider for 47 additional FelCor properties representing almost 14,000 rooms.