http://www.hotelsmag.com/article/CA6652836.html?nid=3457&rid=14043483
Interesting Article on Development Discipline from Hotels Magazine
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 by Steven TutinoWhy don’t hotels take better case of their business centers?
Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 by Steven TutinoI stayed at the Sheraton – Baton Rouge last night and the business center was frustrating. The chairs were positioned so that if one guest was using one computer the other was not accessible. Why don’t GMs look at these details and get them fixed? I think all hotel GMs should have to work from a hotel room in their hotel for a week once per year. I suspect the business center PCs would work, the highspeed Internet would be consistent and shared printing services would be available from all guest rooms.
Back to the Sheraton: the business center computers were running Office 2003 and an old version of Acrobat so I couldn’t open my email attachments. A lady came into the business center looking to print a document (no shared printing service from the rooms at this hotel; where is the PrintMe when you need it?) and she had to move one of the PCs out of the drawer to plug in her USB drive. How frustrating when you are already running fast in the morning to get things done.
Finally, when is Starwood going to wakeup and understand that the business traveler shouldn’t have to pay $9.95 for Internet at a Sheraton? Even Hyatt finally got this announcing last week that Internet at all of their hotels will be at no charge going forward. Starwood is one of the most progressive franchisors, now they need to catch up and realize that the business traveler pays for the room and meals and isn’t willing to pay for highspeed Internet. This is probably why the Hilton Garden Inn I passed on my way to the Sheraton was full while the Sheraton looked like it was running at about 25% occupancy.
Why are hotels buying new Mitel 200s when Mitel itself offers to trade them in for new 3300s?
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 by Steven TutinoI am wondering how many people think purchasing a new Mitel 200 ICP is a dead end investment. The Mitel 200 has some go forward limitations like the inability to support native SIP trunking. A lot of hoteliers think VoIP is pie in the sky but others are seeing lowered operating costs. Over 75% of the hospitality telephone systems we install this year will utitlize SIP trunking when the hotel opens which costs fractions of traditional analog or digital TDM trunking. Are we alone industry or are these numbers normal?
Some brands discourage the Mitel 200 ICP in favor of the Mitel 3300 or open standards solutions from Avaya, Innovation and Cisco. Other franchisors highly encourage their franchisees to purchase the Mitel 200. What are your thoughts? Are buyers of the Mitel 200 ICP buying a dead end product that is technologicaly obsolete or does the platform have all of the features that smallers properties will ever need?
3 Easy Ways to Save Thousands a Month on Operating Costs
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 by Steven Tutino1. Reduce your voice trunking capacity on your phone systems. We find existing hotels oversubscribed by an average of 50% on voice trunks. Did you know that a single phone line that is eliminated will save on average $2,400 over 5 years? A typical 200 room hotel may need as few as 12 channels on a PRI plus three to five analog trunks for fire panels, elevators and emergency backups.
2. Cancel maintenance contracts on phone systems. For what many hotels pay in maintenance on obsolete phone systems they could lease new systems. Candidates for maintenance contract elminations are Fujitsu, Hitachi, Mitel SX200 and SX2000, and older NEC systems. When replacing a hotel system its a good idea to do a thorough circuit analysis to determine if you are oversubsribed on voice lines. Even if you don’t lease a new system you will almost certainly be better off paying as you go for maintenance.
3. Negotiate new Internet bandwidth contracts. I am amazed how many hotels I come accross that are paying $800 or more for a single Internet T1. Recently we migrated a 200 room IHG property from a dedicated AT&T 1.5MB T1 to a Comcast Business Class 16MB Internet connection with a 6MB load balanced AT&T DSL Internet feed. The performance improvement was over 1000% and the cost savings $24,000 over five years.
5 Technologies & Services to Invest In for Your Hotel
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 by Steven Tutino1. Bandwidth (this should be 1,2 and 3)
2. High Definition TVs and Service
3. Business Centers with PCs equipped with Skype
4. Energy Management Systems
5. Windows Terminals (instead of PCs)
