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Marriott hotels will soon offer wireless charging in lobbies
If you find yourself staying in a Marriott hotel later this month, you may encounter wireless charging in the lobby. The lodging outfit is set to install Qi-equipped tech from Kube Systems in the greatroom lobbies of 29 locations in October. Stations can power up to six devices at the same time while replenishing that smartphone and tablet duo without a tether. Support for iOS, Android and Windows is included, so you'll be able to leave those cords in the room when heading down for a drink at the bar. Of course, Marriott has 500 hotels around the world, so this seems to be a limited trial before widespread deployment or significant investment.
Marriott and MIT want to turn your hotel into a social network
If you travel often, you know that it's hard to socialize at hotels; short of a chance encounter, you'll probably end up drinking at the bar by yourself. MIT and Marriott may have a better solution in store with their Six Degrees app. The mobile software uses LinkedIn to find connections between you and other guests. You'll know if someone is a college alum, works at the same company or shares your love of scotch. Staff can organize events if there are enough people with common interests, and there's even an LED-equipped table that lights up a line between visitors when there's a match.
Guests at the Hyatt Regency in Hong Kong can use this smartphone for free
I've found fruit baskets, chocolates, even a bottle of Honig wine in my hotel rooms over the years. Never a smartphone -- until today. Last month, the Hyatt Regency Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong installed handsets in each of its 381 rooms. Guests can use the phone throughout a stay, with unlimited data (and tethering!), and calls to Hong Kong, the US, UK, Australia, China and Singapore included for free. It comes with Facebook, Instagram, Skype and a handful of travel applications pre-installed, and once you type in your Google credentials, you can add any other apps you want. Then, when you're ready to check out, simply tap the "clear data" button to wipe your personal info and return the device to its original state, so it's ready for the next guest.
Starwood's app for Google Glass will let you search and book hotels
Imagine walking into a hotel lobby and telling the wearable on your face to pull up your reservation details. Starwood, the company behind properties from the Aloft to the W to the St. Regis, is hoping to up its hospitality game with an app tailor-made for Google Glass. Currently in beta, the upcoming SPG app for Glass will let guests search Starwood properties around the world, get turn-by-turn directions to a particular hotel and explore room photos, amenities, dining options and more. It looks like you'll also be able to book a reservation directly from the Glass app and -- importantly -- call a hotel if you get lost.
HotelTonight app now lets you preview room availability seven days ahead
HotelTonight's namesake feature is also holding it back: You can only book a room beginning at 9AM on the day of check-in. If you're planning to arrive during a major event, say, in Los Angeles during E3 or Rio during Carnival, landing without a confirmed room can add to the already stressful travel process. But the folks at HotelTonight have a good idea of whether or not you'll be able to find a room, and the team's now ready to share that info with you. Now, when you open up the iOS app, Look Ahead will let you preview room pricing and availability for the next seven days. The app will even give you a heads up if there's an event in town, so you can be aware of higher than normal rates, or opt to change your plans to avoid the crowds. Look Ahead is available today in Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington, DC. You'll need to have an iPhone to take advantage, but expect the feature to hit Android soon.
Starwood Hotels & Resorts explores replacing room keys with iPhones and Android devices
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Starwood Hotels & Resorts (which owns hotel brands like Sheraton and Westin) is rolling out a new pilot program that will allow guests to bypass the check-in desk altogether and head straight to their rooms, using their smartphone as an electronic key. The program will first be available in Cupertino and New York City, with the company angling for a broader rollout in the months to come. Starwood officials are hoping this will be one of the biggest technological changes in the industry since free WiFi. "We believe this will become the new standard for how people will want to enter a hotel," says Frits van Paasschen, Starwood's CEO. "It may be a novelty at first, but we think it will become table stakes for managing a hotel." Guests at participating hotels must download a Starwood app to receive a message "containing a virtual key." The key communicates with a particular room via Bluetooth, enabling guests to enter their room by either tapping or waving their device at a sensor on the door. A video demoing the feature can be seen below. So is this the wave (no pun intended) of the future? Perhaps, but it's hard to ignore a few practical issues with the whole endeavor. One, assuming that the iPhone becomes your virtual key, do you have to lug it around with you everywhere you go? To the gym, to the pool? Might that become a bit burdensome? In other words, is this a solution in search of a problem? To this end, the Journal talked to a hotel owner who tried a similar check-in process at two Holiday Inns before ultimately nixing the initiative. He found that many travelers will sacrifice speed or ease to talk with a staff member and ensure their room has the right view or location, or to try for an upgrade. Other guests may still want to be greeted when they arrive. It'll certainly be interesting to see if Starwood's initiative proves to be more successful.
Starwood swapping room keys for mobile phones at two hotels
Starwood plans to roll out refreshed SPG apps that can unlock your guest room later this quarter. The new tech, which the company refers to as "keyless key" in its intro video (embedded after the break), will soon let you bypass the front desk and enter your room using an Android 4.3 or iPhone 4s (or newer) device at the Aloft Harlem and the Aloft Silicon Valley. Existing locks must be upgraded in order to communicate with the Android and iOS apps via Bluetooth, according to a WSJ report, but Starwood's CEO says that the "investment would not be substantial." Starwood currently offers a Smart Check-In solution at several Aloft hotels, but the existing system requires guests to obtain (and carry) a compatible membership card. It's also quite limited, with only nine hotels currently participating. Meanwhile, if this initial smartphone rollout is a success, your phone could be the key to all W and Aloft hotels worldwide by the end of next year.
UK retailer GAME invites Londoners to stay at its gamified hotel suite
Hotels and video games aren't a natural fit, so now that UK retailer GAME is inviting people to stay in a hotel suite specially designed to suit a gamer's needs, our eyebrows are raised. The inevitable title of this gamified accommodation? The GAME Pad, of course.GAME is only trying out the one Pad at the moment, located at a Stalybridge Suites hotel in London. On top of an en-suite kitchen and king-size bed, the Pad is decked out like a gamer's den, with GAME describing it as the "ultimate gaming experience."There's a Wii U and a PS3 in the lounge area, and an Xbox 360 in the bedroom. Each console is attached to its own 40-inch TV, and comes with the top 10 charting games for that system. With so much gaming to hand, the idea is clearly to make guests feel like they don't have to move from their butt-sized indentations for the entire night. The room is also pre-loaded with snacks, drinks (including booze), and four pizzas, as well as breakfast in the morning. It doesn't come cheap, though, with one night's stay priced at £199 ($320), with multiple nights bookable. %Gallery-172798%
This is the Modem World: Hotels owe us free WiFi (and cotton swabs)
Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology. When I departed for my three-week honeymoon, I informed all my colleagues that I would be off the grid: unavailable, unreachable, without access, etc. In truth, I was in airplane mode scanning for WiFi networks several times a day, checking in on East Coast friends dealing with Hurricane Sandy. Side note: I was doing so from poolside chairs while the new wife was asleep and not about to be annoyed by my digital addictions, so that made it OK, and stuff.
Ibis hotels to have robots paint art while they track your sleep: no, that's not creepy at all (video)
First they invaded our factories, and now it's our hotel rooms. Is nowhere safe from the robots? In truth, Ibis' upcoming Sleep Art project is very slick, even if it smacks of robot voyeurism. Ibis hotels in Berlin, London and Paris will let 40 successful applicants sleep on beds that each have 80 sensors translating movements, sound and temperature into truly unique acrylic paintings by robotic arms connected through WiFi. You don't have to worry that the machines are literally watching you sleep -- there's no cameras or other visual records of the night's tossing and turning, apart from the abstract lines on the canvas. All the same, if you succeed in landing a stay in one of the Sleep Art hotel rooms between October 13th and November 23rd, you're a brave person. We all know how this ends.
Apple nabs patent for NFC-based travel check-in, doesn't quell NFC iPhone rumors just yet
Apple has been chasing NFC patents for years, but it's just now been granted a US patent for its own approach to a transportation check-in -- one of the most common uses of the technology in the real world. The filing describes a theoretical iTravel app that would store reservation and ticket information for just about any vehicle and stop along the way: planes, trains and (rented) automobiles would just have the traveler tap an NFC-equipped device to hop onboard, and the hotel at the end of the line would also take credentials through a gentle bump. Besides the obvious paper-saving measures, iTravel could help skip key parts of the airport security line by providing passport information, a fingerprint or anything else screeners might want to see while we'd otherwise be juggling our suitcases. It all sounds ideal, but before you start booking that trip to the South Pacific with ambitions of testing an NFC-equipped 2012 iPhone, remember this: the patent was originally filed in 2008. We clearly haven't seen iTravel manifest itself as-is, and recent murmurs from the Wall Street Journal have suggested that Apple isn't enthusiastic about the whole NFC-in-commerce idea even today. Still, with Passbook waiting in the wings, the patent can't help but fuel speculation that Apple is getting more serious about an iPhone with near-field wireless in the future.
DirecTV DVRs available in over 100 hotels, never miss the restaurant opening times again
On-demand TV viewing continues to secrete itself into the fabric of your lives and now its squeezing more viewing hours out of you from hotel rooms across the US. DirecTV's HD DVRs pack the typical programming guide and recording options, plus the ability for hotels to add up to 50 channels of their own content to the recorders -- meaning plenty of hotel infomercials dying to be paused, live. DirecTV has now officially launched its Residential Experience, bringing its DVR technology to 110 hotels across the country. Fortunately, the systems also include the hygienic touch of an anti-microbial remote. Classy.
iPads affect the future of hotel Wi-Fi
Hotels are at a crossroads because of the iPad, says a report from the New York Times. Travelers armed with iPads are taxing WiFi internet connections and causing problems for hotels that want to provide reliable internet service for their visitors. This bandwidth crunch is the result of iPad owners who use their tablet to stream video, browse the internet and work remotely from their hotel room. David W. Garrison, the CEO of iBAHN, a global provider of digital information systems for hotels, says hotel bandwidth consumption has increased threefold in the past year alone. Dedicated internet service providers can handle this increase, but many hotels have slow internet connections that are easily swamped by this jump in consumption. And this is only the beginning of the iPad problem for hotels. Apple confirmed it has sold 11 million iPads in the past three months and the Gartner Group predicts the total number of iPads in circulation will rise to 100 million by the end of 2012. Hotel owners will have to decide whether they want to continue offering WiFi service to their visitors that's inexpensive to provide, but excruciatingly slow or pay to upgrade their bandwidth and institute a paid tiered service for their customers. Customers might frown on paying a meter-based fee, but many don't like encountering poor internet connectivity when traveling either. Over 2/3rds of business travelers surveyed by iBahn said they would not return to a hotel that had a poor internet connection. According to Garrison, only 10 to 15% of hotels offer tiered service; for the remaining 85 to 90%, it's time to cough up the cash to improve connectivity or stop offering a dysfunctional service that's hurting their business.
Google launches Hotel Finder, finds a way to recycle Google Maps reviews
By now, it should be no secret that Google wants to get up in your online trip-planning business (if it wasn't somehow there already). First, there was the announcement that El Goog would buy ITA, the company serving up pretty much all of your online ticketing options -- a deal that still hasn't closed. Then came flight schedule searches and now, the outfit's rounding it all out by throwing hotels into the mix. The company just launched Hotel Finder, a service that lets you -- wait for it -- find a place to lay your weary head in these great fifty states. At first glance, it's little more than a specific use case for Google Maps -- just type in a city or US zip code to get a map with the usual spreads of pinpoints. Though Google won't be the middleman booking your hotel reservation, you can use the tool to fine-tune your search, drawing circles on the map to scour multiple neighborhoods. As you'd expect, you can also whittle the search by price and rating, and read reviews that people originally posted on Google Maps. One thing we're liking about the UI is that you don't have to open a new tab to read the full spill on a hotel -- you can just click the listing to see it expand right there, alongside pretty photo collages. Hit the source link to poke around, though if its bare-bones simplicity turns you off, don't say Google didn't warn you -- the tool is so new that Google isn't calling it a "beta" so much as an...experiment.
DirecTV takes the germs out of your hotel remote, bed still questionable
Hotel rooms are gross. Well, some of 'em are. It doesn't take a germaphobe to know that your room's previous occupant may have had less-than-ideal hygienic priorities, so it'll probably come as a great relief to you frequent flier types that DirecTV has decided to do something about it. Bundled into its new Residential Experience for Hotels program is a proprietary germ-free remote control for every room. That's all well, clean and good, but what makes this experience even homier are the 100+ HD channels DirecTV added so you can make heavy use of that enhanced interactive program guide. Yessir, now you can watch HBO and, erm, 'adult offerings' without ever having to wash your hands; the new service is currently in testing with an intended launch for later this summer. It remains to be seen whether the EPA will swoop down to backhand DirecTV for dubious anti-microbial claims like it did IO Gear some years back. In the meantime, it's a solid sanitary high-five for the hospitality industry.
How to reserve a room for BlizzCon 2011
Going to BlizzCon 2011? That makes two of us! But if you're like other confirmed con-goers, you may have had trouble reserving a room; lots of hotels in the area are telling callers that they're sold out for the days BlizzCon takes place. This is not necessarily true! We've discovered that Blizzard and/or the Orange County Visitor's Center has reserved many rooms in the hotels surrounding the convention center specifically for BlizzCon guests. In order to claim them, though, you have to call the Visitor's Center directly. If you have a specific hotel in mind, you can ask for it, but they can also hook you up with other hotels that fit your price range. There's no cost to reserve a room, and you have until Sept. 1 to cancel the reservation with no charge. You just need a credit or debit card to have on file. The number to call for reservations is (714) 765-8868. They're open normal business hours, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time.
ASSA ABLOY trials remote hotel check-ins, unlocking your room with NFC cellphones (video)
Just think of it, no more hanging around your hotel's front desk like some unrefined homo erectus. The Clarion Hotel in Stockholm is starting up a new pilot program to allow visitors to check in and collect their room key without the repugnant need for speaking to an actual human being -- it can all be done with an NFC-equipped mobile phone. Provided your smartphone can do the near-field communications dance, all your information can be remotely downloaded, stored, and wiped (if need be), and you can even check out from a room using the accompanying application. Samsung handsets are being provided to selected customers during the period of this trial, though once its four-month incubation period is over, you'll have to bring your own bit of advanced telephony to avoid the queues. We're sure you'll think of something. Video and full press release after the break.
The Daily Grind: Got cons?
So the New York Comic Con is in full swing, and the fact that it's here already reminds us of just how many game-related cons there are scattered throughout the calendar year. Whether it's NYCC, Dragon Con, E3, GDC, or the various flavors of PAX, there always seems to be something just around the corner that calls for hotel reservations and airline tickets. More often than not, the next convention on the circuit sneaks right up on us before we manage to shake the jet lag from the last one. While we'd like nothing better than to shirk responsibilities and tour the world of gaming and pop culture conventions for a year, work must occasionally intrude, and most of us have to pick and choose our events. What about you Massively readers? Did you attend NYCC this weekend, and are you a regular on the gaming convention circuit? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of our readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's The Daily Grind!
OpenWays makes your smartphone a hotel room key, provides a different kind of 'unlock'
For years now, hotel chains have been toying with alternative ways to letting patrons check-in, access their room and run up their bill with all-too-convenient in-room services. Marriott began testing smartphone check-ins way back in 2006, and select boutique locations (like The Plaza Hotel in New York and Boston's Nine Zero) have relied on RFID, iris scanners, biometric identifiers and all sorts of whiz-bang entry methods in order to make getting past a lock that much easier (or harder, depending on perspective). This month, InterContinental Hotels Group announced that they would soon be trialing OpenWays at Chicago's Holiday Inn Express Houston Downtown Convention Center, enabling iPhone owners to fire up an app and watch their room door open in a magical sort of way. Other smartphone platforms will also be supported, and as we've seen with other implementations, users of the technology will also be able to turn to their phone to order additional services, extend their stay or fess up to that window they broke. There's no word on when this stuff will depart the testing phase and go mainstream, but we're guessing it'll be sooner rather than later. Video after the break, if you're interested.
Hotel room HDTVs still stuck with standard definition TV have an upgrade on the way
It's a sad truth experienced by too many travelers, far too many of the HDTVs installed in hotels over the last few years don't have any high definition programming coming to them. While the experienced traveler is prepared for all circumstances we've all been stranded somewhere with only stretched, blurry SD programming as our only option. The USA Today recaps the issue, with execs from Marriott, InterContinental Hotel Group (owners of Holiday Inn & Crowne Plaza hotels) and Hilton chiming in about their plans to expand HD services over the next year. That won't completely erase the horrors of our last hotel stay, but at least we can be at ease knowing a change is coming.
