Luxury Hotels Vie For Best E-butler
The Age
Tuesday December 7, 1999
A boom in the luxury hotel market has created a new battle over who offers the business traveller the best e-service.
Leading the way in this investment race is Sofitel, the upscale brand of the French-based Accor group, which is planning 40 new hotel openings around the world before the end of 2001 to lift its global coverage by almost a third.
Australia joined the push last month when the Sofitel Reef Casino opened in Cairns.
Like other hotel chains, the Sofitel group is trying to capture the technological edge, without becoming too sterile. The aim is style with substance.
The result is a mix of old and new among the newest Sofitel hotels in Paris. The setting is grand and historic, but the fit-out modern.
Sofitel Le Faubourg, which opened in May, is situated in the eighth district of Paris, the capital of couture. It is a combination of 18th and 19th century buildings, each retaining their facade.
Behind this exterior, all rooms within Le Faubourg are online, which doesn't just mean Internet facilities but multiple telephone lines to ensure that a guest downloading data doesn't clog up communications.
Regular guests are given their own personal telephone and fax numbers for as long as they require, so as to be contactable direct.
The Sofitel group is in the process of networking its global hotel chain so guests can access phone messages via a personalised pin-coded voice-mail box from anywhere in the world.
The Ritz Carlton chain, which is expanding by as much as 50per cent in the lucrative US market, has introduced a ``technology butler" whose job it is to service its guests' every electronic problem.
Another exclusive hotel chain, The Peninsula group is expanding through the US, soon to open a new hotel in Chicago, offering fax machines and ISDN access in every room, along with four phone lines.
The Peninsula group did a survey of its guests and found they wanted access to the latest technology, but not to the extent that it impinged on their relaxation time.
As a result, the Peninsula's fax machines in the US have an inbuilt circuit that monitors the level of light in the room. If the lights are off, it stores all incoming faxes. When the lights are switched on it prints out from memory.
Sofitel's newest hotels also have low-calorie gourmet restaurants for the weight-conscious traveller, weight-loss programs, and its latest hotel at Charles de Gaulle airport has a whole floor of boardrooms so travellers can do business without moving far from the airport.
© 1999 The Age
