SAN JOSE, CA— The Fairmont San Jose will add the latest technology to its new 264-room tower, which is expected to be completed this fall. At the center of the new technology additions will be an in-room portal which will be beta-tested at the property— which sits in high-tech Silicon Valley— and ultimately used in Fairmont Hotels & Resorts systemwide. Fairmont management is presently brainstorming with the e-commerce community in its techy neighborhood to come up with the portal plan, said the property’s general manager, Fred Hansen. “We volunteered to be the beta site because we are in Silicon Valley,” said Hansen. “Technology, especially in Silicon Valley, changes every day, and so the needs of our clientele changes,” he said. “Within the next three months we will have something,” said Hansen about the portal, whose offerings will vary chainwide to suit each city once it is rolled out systemwide. “The portal will be different in the different cites you go to,” he said. “In San Jose, guests don’t spend that much time in the room during the day because they are going to meetings. So if they want, they can set up their schedule ahead of time, and [using the portal]can arrange for transportation or for golf in Silicon Valley.” They can also get tickets for sports events, arrange for outside dining or make reservations at other Fairmont properties, he said. Guests will also have direct access to the hotel’s concierge via e-mail, he added. The hotel has not yet selected a high-speed Internet access provider; Hansen said, noting that it would be “some form of DSL.” Management is waiting to make the selection “until the last minute because the whole [technology]scenario could change,” he noted. Once the tower is completed, the remaining hotel, consisting of 541 rooms, will be updated technologically. Hansen expects that to be done by June 2002. Working alongside Hansen is Fairmont management out of corporate San Francisco offices as well as an on-site IT manager. The hotel has already made one high-tech installation at the existing property in the form of a minibar that uses infra-red sensors to assist attendants in determining what items need to be restocked. “When you check into the hotel, there are no minibar keys,” said Hansen. “If you open the minibar, and pick up a bottle of wine, then put it back, the minibar attendant sees you looked at the bottle of wine but put it back. If after 20 seconds [you haven’t put it back], it automatically gets charged to the guest portfolio, and now the attendant knows to bring a bottle of wine to the room when he is restocking.” The new process, which eliminates the need for the attendant to check the bar, and then go retrieve new items saves time and manpower. “It used to take nine people to check the minibar, now it takes three,” said Hansen who said the product is provided by Minibar Systems out of Maryland. On the “soft-tech” side, the minibar is covered in a beautiful wood cabinet, said Hansen. Other technology installations at the property include a telephone switch system provided by Nortel that allows for guests to be given pass codes that let hotel operators put them directly into a system to pick up messages from the Meridian voicemail system. Guests at the property can also get their own private number and personalize their own voicemail. “No one needs to know you are in a hotel,” said Hansen. “The caller would never talk to a Fairmont operator.” The hotel has also installed 900-megahertz, two-line cordless phones in its suites, and has made its PMS interactive so that it can share guest preference information with other Fairmont hotels.
