BUSINESS travellers’ expectations are forever shifting upwards as travel suppliers adapt their products to meet consumer needs.
A couple of years ago, having a data port for a laptop would be a unique selling point for most business hotels but for today’s business travellers, this would be almost the norm.
Most of the major upmarket chains now offer specially designed rooms, or even one or two dedicated floors, tothe high-spending corporate market.
Equipped with larger desks, multiple power points, special lighting and other facilities required by business travellers, these rooms are usually sold at a premium on top of the normal rate.
Hyatt Hotels Corporation, which operates Hyatt properties in North America introduced its Business Plan rooms five years ago and is now upgrading them with newest technology.
It is installing the new IBC-5000 Business Centre which allow guests to print from their laptops, copy documents and send faxes.
After a successful trial in its four hotels in the Chicago area, the company is rolling out the new machines to all of its 90 business hotels in the US and Canada.
Meanwhile, Hyatt International, which operates all Hyatt hotels outside North America, is taking a different approach.
Its business-room concept can be best seen at its Berlin hotel, which opened last October. The rooms were developed after extensive research among 25-year-olds who were asked to describe the hotel they would expect in the future.
Although technology has been taken into account, the chain has focused on the feel and style of the rooms. The design is minimalistic and modern, and the bathrooms have more natural daylight because they have two doors, one into a corridor and one in the bedroom. Eventually, television sets will allow Internet access.
Marketing director David Sparrow said: “We’ve still got to cater for leisure travellers and business travellers at the same time so you have to be careful not to go too far.”
All new Hyatts in business locations will follow the Berlin design and at the same time, the group is developing technology which will make the television a major source of information as well as an entertainmentsystem.
However, the high-tech nature of the emerging business rooms can sometimes cause extra headaches for business travellers. Instead of relying on the expertise of the staff in the hotel business centre, guests are left to fathom out the new communication tools in the confines of their bedrooms – at all hours of the day and night.
In response to this, Ritz-Carlton has introduced technology butlers to deal with any problems that occur around the clock. First introduced at the Ritz-Carlton in Kuala Lumpur, the concept is now being rolled out to the group’s other business hotels.