Hotels Compete to Please Their Guests with High-Tech Gadgets Such as Wi-Fi, iPod Docks, LCD TV.
What’s new in the luxury hotel industry? Quite a lot according to a LA Times article by Kathy Chin Leong. She describes the rush to high- tech gadgets as follows:
“AFTER an invigorating lap swim, guests at the newly opened Four Seasons Silicon Valley Hotel will soon be able to flip-flop over to a poolside cabana to watch "Oprah" on a wall-mounted, 42-inch plasma TV and use the same screen to check Google's stock price on the hotel's wireless Internet network.�
“At the Peninsula New York, patrons can set alarm clocks or adjust temperature, lighting and TV volume controls by pressing keys on the electronic bedside control panel. If they want to sleep in, they can depress the panel's Do Not Disturb key that activates a light outside the door and silences the doorbell.�
These two paragraphs give a good flavor of the lengths that luxury hotels are going to allow hotel guests to stay connected to their own gadgets and to choose their own entertainment. Vacation rental owners should take note, because these amenities start at the most expensive luxury hotels and then trickle down to budget hotels, many of whom provide free Wi-Fi. Any good vacation rental should have available at least the level of amenities that is available in budget hotels, and preferably much more.
An industry expert, Doug Rice, sums it up well, “Generation Y consumers are well-traveled, and they have lived the good life," Rice said. "This teen generation cannot even conceive of not having Wi-Fi." Baby boomers are almost as dependent. They, too, are tethered to their Palms, BlackBerries and laptops. Chains, independent hotels, even bed and breakfasts have found they need to offer Internet access to compete.�
To the above statement we would only say “amen� and include vacation rentals in the list of accommodations that must offer internet access in order to compete.
