High-Tech Hotels Meetings and conventions are starting to look more like Broadway shows. But because demands are changing rapidly, hotels are wary of putting money into "maybes."

It's no coincidence that B. Bagby, the Hotel Roanoke's business and technology services manager, has a background in theater. Photo by Mark Rhodes

By Marjolijn Bijlefeld
One year ago, B. Bagby was a network contractor by day and a theater hand at night and on weekends. He found a position that combined both interests in — of all places — a hotel. His new employer, The Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center, is one of the most technologically advanced hotels in the state.

Conferences have come a long way from the speaker behind the podium. They more closely resemble theater productions, says Bagby, the business and technology services manager at The Hotel Roanoke. There can be different slide shows or PowerPoint presentations running on each of several large screens. There’s sophisticated lighting, advanced sound systems and a crew that can assemble and disassemble the stage in a snap.

The Hotel Roanoke’s conference crew includes six people who make sure the networks, telephone and Internet connections are in place. Four of the technicians have theater or television-production backgrounds. Such experience is essential as videoconferencing becomes more popular.

The hospitality industry anticipates growing demand for technological infrastructure to accommodate training sessions and conferences in the new millennium. Hotels and conference centers around the state are upgrading Internet connectivity to conference rooms, business centers and guest rooms to please conference goers and business travelers alike.

Yet hotels and conference centers are in reactive roles. "Most of the improvements we’re making are driven by the customer. The hotel industry doesn’t see itself as the technological creator," says Kai Fischer, area director of marketing for Marriott’s Richmond properties. "What we’re trying to do is facilitate a more efficient stay. That ranges from a speedy and efficient check in and check out to being able to check your e-mail from a guest room," he says.

Virginia’s major conference hotels also are responding to the technology available at the newer extended-stay hotels and at upstart chains such as Wingate Inns International.

Wingate recently opened properties in Richmond, Lynchburg and Winchester, and its franchisees are raising the bar on guest room Internet access. Wingate hotels provide unlimited Internet access at T-1 speeds to all of their overnight guests at no additional cost, says Michael J. LaCosta, a spokesman for the New Jersey-based hotel chain. "If your room rate is $69, you can log on and leave it on all night, and your bill will still be $69."

Wingate, a midpriced chain that caters to business travelers, wired its guest rooms quickly by farming out the technical details to LodgeNet Entertainment Corp. Specialty vendors, such as LodgeNet, can close hotels’ technological gaps until demand warrants bringing the expertise in-house. Ten years ago, providing fax service was an important function to hotels that cater to business travelers. Today, it’s direct Internet access. Five years from now, it’s anyone’s guess.

Bagby anticipates the next big thing will be desktop conferencing, beaming an image from a conference to desktop PCs of hundreds, or even thousands, of participants. That will make conference presentations resemble television productions even more closely, he says.

What it won’t do, he predicts, is take away from hotel and conference center business. "I don’t think wanting to be at a conference physically is going away. But rather than having 1,800 people come and 3,000 miss out, we’ll be able to stream the conference out to those 3,000 who can tune into their computers."

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PowerPoint has changed the face of conference presentation. The relatively simple Microsoft program enables just about anyone to computerize presentations. The result is a smoother, more professional presentation. No shuffling overhead projector sheets. No upside-down slides.

From a technological standpoint, it’s been extremely easy to accommodate. Computerized presentations use the same screens; speakers use the same podium and microphone. That’s good, too, because while many presenters choose some data projection system, there are still plenty who rely on flip charts and overhead projectors.

But plug-and-play presentations allow speakers to move around. "We see more of the ‘town hall’ concept that the political arena has made popular," says Marriott’s Fischer. "Speakers interact more with the audience rather than standing there reading off note cards. The dramatic message is more prevalent and lighting and decor become part of the message."

To keep down costs and increase efficiency, meetings also are being jammed into shorter periods. "It’s easy to give a data dump over three to four days and send everyone home with big notebooks. But time is too precious, and organizers want to deliver meetings in a shorter time. If they want the message to be clearly articulated, they use higher technology in a more creative medium."

Still, for those hotels with in-house audiovisual departments, there’s a lot of learning. "Flip charts haven’t changed at all, ... but data projection is changing all the time," says Eric Whitson, director of sales and marketing at The Founders Inn and Conference Center in Virginia Beach. The hotel has just renovated its facilities, and it plans to open a new 25,000-square-foot convention space in June. In some meeting rooms, data projectors are being installed in the ceiling to drop down when needed. That way, the presenter simply plugs the computer into a floor or wall jack. In the amphitheater, each chair will have a computer hookup so companies can hold computer training sessions.

While some hotels haven’t felt too technologically taxed yet, most seem to realize that as business travelers become more reliant on their computers, hotels will have to keep pace.

At The Hotel Roanoke, the staff is regularly put through the paces, partly because of the high expectations of Virginia Tech presenters who use the facility. The university’s foundation owns the hotel, and the conference center is jointly owned by the university and the city. While Virginia Tech football fans, alumni and parents fill up guest rooms, the university’s continuing education department accounts for much of the conference center’s meetings.

Because of its high-tech reputation, however, The Hotel Roanoke also draws corporate meetings that demand more advanced conference capabilities. All the floors in the hotel are wired with fiber-optic cables. And it’s a good thing they are, because one recent group needed 115 Internet connections. "They had four labs happening simultaneously, and they needed to be connected to each other and to the Internet. We’ve also had corporations ask to build individual networks or create a secure T-1 line connection to their own corporate network," Bagby says.

Five years ago, people were starting to ask about secure network connections, Bagby says. "In the last three years, it’s become important," he says. "But just this year, it’s become an expectation."

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Hotels regularly upgrade their facilities, and the Hilton Alexandria Mark Center is no exception. Hilton bought the 15-year-old hotel last February, and it’s in the midst of a $13 million renovation. That includes putting two phone lines in each of the 495 guest rooms so guests can use their computers and telephones at the same time, says Charles Stephenson, director of sales.

As for the meeting areas, the plans are still evolving. Presenters are asking to connect to the Internet and project what’s on their computers to the screen. Theoretically, that’s easy enough, but if the phone line runs through the switchboard, it’s a slow connection. A lower-cost option would be to get a private telephone line into the conference area, but some companies want better connectivity. "The requests from conference planners aren’t more demanding, except how it relates to Internet access. In fact, the surprise is how much requests haven’t changed over the past 10 years," Stephenson says. For example, crystal-ball gazers a decade ago predicted that videoconferencing would be all the rage. In the past 10 months, Stephenson has had just one request for the service.

Don’t count it out, though, says Tim McFarlane, director of sales at the Holiday Inn Select/Koger Conference Center in Chesterfield County. His hotel plans to add videoconferencing capabilities late this year or in early 2001. Richmond tends to be 18 months to two years behind other major markets, he says, noting that the demand does exist elsewhere.

At the Richmond Marriott, the region’s largest conference hotel, teleconferencing and videoconferencing are regular features. "We’ve had to add that connectivity into our meeting facilities," Fischer says. Before, we called the phone company to have something put in for an organization, but now we have a patch panel and can provide that flexibility.

At some point, that became the most efficient way to operate. "The costs when we first started were passed directly on to the consumer looking for that service. Now we’ve found that the demand was there for us to invest in it and provide a small margin for the hotel," Fischer says."

It’s obviously easier to add wiring and connectivity to guest rooms and meeting spaces while hotels are being built or undergoing renovation, but it’s difficult to gauge how the Internet will be accessed in several years. "I think other companies are going to provide the technology and charge the users," Stephenson says. "It’s moving so fast, and it’s too easy to be left behind, so it leaves a wonderful market for those who say, ‘We can help you catch up.’ If things weren’t moving so fast, hotels might be able to do more. To some extent, I think our current Internet connectivity is like black-and-white TV."

Trying to guess where the technology is going and what the demand will be can be risky. Capital required for high-tech equipment is substantial, and it could become hopelessly outdated in a year or so. The Hotel Roanoke added a distance-learning center, but it has rarely been used for that purpose. In fact, it’s evolving into a teleconference space. It turns out that colleges, not hotels, became the prime venue for distance learning.

"We outsource and rent rather than get directly involved" in the latest conference contraptions, says McFarlane. Besides, owning the equipment also would mean servicing it and customizing it for each user, requiring a more technical staff, he says.

Indeed, finding the staff to fill more technical roles will be one of hotels’ biggest challenges in the coming years, says Bagby at The Hotel Roanoke. Hotels are used to hiring people who are outgoing and gregarious — traits that don’t always overlap with technophiles, he says. And hotels don’t pay as well as technology companies. So it’s up to the industry to make it known that hotels and conference centers are career options for technically skilled people.

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Cleo Battle hopes the technology demands of conference planners don’t change too much in the next two years. Battle, the director of sales for the Metro Richmond Convention and Visitors Bureau, says the city’s new convention center will offer "all the bells and whistles ... dedicated lines, videoconferencing and satellite capabilities. It’s the state-of-the-art, but it’s all speculation based on what customers have asked for at this point. By the time the building opens in 2002, we could be behind the eight ball."

Battle, however, is confident that the new convention center will deliver whatever customers demand in the new millennium — as long as the capability to hook up equipment is there. Thanks to outsourcers who can provide newer technologies, the wiring issue is probably the greatest concern. "If a customer has to pay the cost of wiring in Richmond, but doesn’t in Baltimore, guess where they’ll go?" Battle asks.

Wiring is also a key consideration at the Pavilion Convention Center in Virginia Beach, which was built in 1980. A year ago, the exhibit hall floor was rewired with fiber-optic cable to better accommodate voice and data lines. Now the entire facility is scheduled for renovation and expansion, which will include "greater bandwidth and greater connectivity," says Courtney Dyer, assistant manager of the convention center.

It all boils down to efficiency. "Time has become the big commodity," says Whitson at The Founders Inn. "What we sell is productivity." If business travelers and conference delegates can minimize down time, they will be more productive.