NEW YORK— HOTEL BUSINESS® has learned that technology service provider DataVox Hospitality Services has developed a new high-speed Internet connectivity and digital video-on-demand package specifically targeted at the hospitality industry. It officially unveiled on Oct. 7. DataVox Technologies, an IT systems integrator, created the hospitality subsidiary about a year ago in order to concentrate on the lodging vertical market, according to Norbert Sluzewski, the company’s president and founder. After nearly a year of meeting with hoteliers and franchises, the integrator has now come out with its i-Connect and i-View technology package specifically for hotels, he said. “Hospitality companies want hospitality in your name. We want to show the hospitality industry that we are serious about focusing on this market,” Sluzewski said. “It is a specific market niche that we feel we have the right technology and solutions for,” he stated, adding that more hotels are embracing high- speed Internet access in meeting rooms as well as guestrooms. Specifically, DataVox’s i-Connect enables hotels with multi-unit type environments to offer Internet services across existing telephone or Ethernet lines. The entire system can be deployed without any interruption to the existing telephone service thus avoiding all construction costs associated with running a new cable, Sluzewski said. Using i-connect, property managers, hospitality and corporate facilities can deliver a variety of new broadband services that integrate voice, video and data such as: high-speed Internet access, video-on-demand, voice over IP, Internet gaming, multimedia, secure access to virtual private networks, office productivity enhancement applications, and distance learning and training. “Hotels are discovering that they need to accommodate all of their guests,” Sluzewski said. “If a business traveler has high-speed Internet access in a meeting room and he goes back to his room to work, he is going to expect the same service. This also applies to the leisure traveler who has children that are accustomed to being on the Internet. This is becoming a key service component for the hospitality industry.” Case in point: Hilton Garden Inn recently said it plans to provide complimentary high-speed Internet access in all Hilton Garden Inn hotel guestrooms by the end of 2003. Hilton Hotels Corp. is expecting this new free amenity to place the mid-price Hilton Garden Inn chain ahead of its competitors by making the technology service a brand standard. DataVox Hospitality is specifically targeting midscale hotels and hoping to leverage the parent companies 10 years as an IT systems integrator as an asset, Sluzewski said. Currently, The company is still in negotiations with several hotel chains and expects to make a customer announcement during the two next weeks, he said. “We are still in the process of engaging in contractual relations,” Sluzewski said. “ We are close to signing a deal involving 160 properties and 20,000 guestrooms.” In addition to i-Connect, DataVox Hospitality is also making available i-View, a companion product specifically for video-on-demand services to individual rooms over the I-Connect infrastructure. Property managers can install a set-top box in each room and all of these are then linked to a central content server that is updated with licensed movie content. It is deployed as a system owned by the particular property in which it is installed. Through these efforts, DataVox Hospitality is expected to grow to a $1.5 million business next year and then double that in 2004, Sluzewski said. For its part, DataVox Technologies is a $10 million to $12 million systems integrator.
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