Tech Savvy Hotels

By Author: Steve Robinson
Total Articles: 468
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While cheap travel options, including cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms and cheap vacation packages, remain important to many, travelers are increasingly looking to stay at more tech friendly hotels.

The following are hotels and/or chains which Frommers has identified as having distinguished themselves for their high tech ambiance:

• Starwood has initiated an Aloft Smart Check-in program, which provides selected Starwood Preferred Guest members with an Aloft branded Radio Frequency Identification cards (RFID). These cards allow them to skip the hotel front desk at Aloft Lexington, Aloft Harlem and Aloft New York Brooklyn as well as Aloft Dallas Downtown and proceed straight to their pre-assigned rooms.

Guests room assignments are emailed to them on the day of the reservation and their Aloft RFID card will open the hotel room by placing it in front of the door lock.

• At Hotel 1000 in Seattle, housekeeping only enters rooms when guests are not present. The staff is able to “ring” a silent doorbell to a room which triggers an infrared scan to determine whether a guest is in a room.
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Hotel 1000 has many other high tech features including a customized Microsoft Surface table in Studio 1000. The table is a multi user, multi touch electronic device which empowers guest to interact with a Virtual Concierge to find the city’s hot spots, upload and share photos, and even play chess or checkers.

• The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan offers iPads in each of its rooms that can be used to summon the appropriate hotel help with a customized app. This app allows guests to interact with a concierge, room service, schedule wake up calls and print off flight boarding passes.

• 390 Courtyard by Marriott lobbies in the U.S. as well as the Baltimore, Houston and Phoenix airports feature GoBoard 57 inch LCD touchscreens. Users are able to send driving directions from Goboards directly to their smartphones. GoBoards also offer walking directions to area restaurants and tourists spots.

• Aria Resort & Casino CityCenter in Las Vegas has programmed its guestrooms to remember previous guests’ preferred music, room lighting and temperature settings. A remote control is available that can adjust these settings and control the TV/video systems and curtains as well. By saying “goodnight” in their rooms guests activate privacy settings and turn off the TV, music and lights.
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