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Forget fruit baskets. Now, the only apples luxury Asian hoteliers want to talk about are the iPod kind. Hong Kong's five-star Le Meridien Cyberport loans the digital music players to guests working out in the gym. And it's just one of the chains now using gadget-happy Asia as a test bed to redefine the first-class hotel as a digital experience.
The five-star Langham Place Hotel opened its doors this summer in Hong Kong's Mongkok district, adorned with Brazilian sandstone and Italian marble. But $4.5 million--one third of the cost of building the 665-room hotel--went into technology. High-speed Internet connections are everywhere, even inside elevators. Cordless room phones work throughout the hotel, and have colored touch screens for sending e-mail. E-mail recipients can respond by voice, at no cost, using Internet voice technology.
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The phone's screen can also be programmed to display images of family or pets and phone numbers can be stored for future visits. Key staff carry portable computers that provide instant access to reservation details, e-mail and the Internet. The Mongkok hotel is the model for services the Langham group plans to roll out across Asia, North America and Europe.
A boom in new construction gives designers a chance to rethink the luxury hotel. Cyberport was built as a business hotel without a business center, because Wi-Fi is everywhere. But the grand dames aren't doddering behind. The Peninsula group of Hong Kong has an R&D lab of eight engineers. One proprietary innovation: a phone that edits out the sound of running water. Current experiments include lighting that changes with the seasons. What next? Says a Peninsula officer: "It's quite top secret."
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