Hotel Technology At the Start of the New Millennium

Abstract

By the beginning of the new millennium, hotel technology will be entrenched in every phase of hotel management, marketing, and operations. Powerful new microchips will provide dramatic increases in power perdollarinvested. High-speed, high-capacity fiber-optic cable will link the world for faster, less costly telecommuni cations and will help change how hotels communicate with their guests and with headquarters. New hotel PBXs, telephone sets, and voice messaging systems will improve guest service, while the arrival of wireless pocket phones will mean that hotel guests carry their communication devices with them. Interactive, three- dimensional, high-definition television will change how and what TV-based guest- room services are delivered, while private videoconferencing networks will impact hotel revenues as more businesses use them to reduce travel and hotel costs. The TV set, the telephone, and the computer will be linked in the culmination of the growing trend already under way to merge communications technologies. Many other new tech-based tools and challenges will emerge.