Hong Kong's newest hotel opens its doors on Thursday, and in keeping with the times, the Internet is its main selling point.

The Rosedale on the Park, in a small side street opposite Victoria Park, bills itself as a "cyber boutique hotel".

It is the first local hotel to have networking built into the blueprints. From broadband Internet in every room to wireless access in the restaurants and biometric security in the back office, the Rosedale is probably Hong Kong's most wired hostelry.

"The experience begins from the point of making the reservation to the time when guests leave," said Terence Ronson, who planned the hotel's IT systems.

"We are trying to maximise the guest experience through the effective use of technology."

The Rosedale is owned by construction firm Paul Y ITC, which built the entire building from precast components in its plant in Yuen Long.

Cavities within the walls allow workers to feed in pipes and electrical cables without disturbing guests.

Category 5 cabling has been laid throughout, giving broadband Internet access to each of the 274 rooms. The business centre, cybercafe, function room, bar and restaurant all have their own terminals.

Using 3Com's Visitor and Community Network (VCN) system, diners in the bars and restaurants have wireless Internet access from their tables.

While most hotels either neglect Internet access or leave it in the hands of specialist providers such as I-Quest, STSN Adsale and Inter-touch, the Rosedale out-sourced the job to a local technology start-up.

Hospitality industry veteran Mr Ronson formed Pertlink in October, to provide technology services to the hotel industry. The Rosedale is his first major project.

"Plenty of hotels are offering Internet in-room," he said.

"A lot of hotels will go through third-party companies to do that service for them. They will pick on a particular service provider and out-source the whole function. What we have decided to do here is to keep it in-house and manage it ourselves."

The HK$7 million spent on the project is significantly higher than the average hotel invests in IT systems, but Mr Ronson believes the cost will be easy to recoup.

"The person who travels today looks for this. It is all part of the experience. We live in a hi-tech world, and people want this functionality," he said.

Once installed, the Rosedale will own the entire system, though Pertlink will remain involved with its management and development.

"By putting the system in ourselves and by putting the infrastructure already in the building, that cost is set aside, where if you get these other service providers, you have to put all this heavy equipment in there," Mr Ronson said.

"People such as Inter-touch and Worldroom [I-Quest] see that as a profit centre for them, whereas we see it as a value-added service for the guest."

The Rosedale is an affiliate of the Best Western hotel chain, a group rarely commended for its advanced technology.

Hotel general manager Maria Lee said other hotels in the group had already expressed an interest in learning from the Hong Kong experience.

While many older hotels are forced by their copper telephone cables to rely on Digital Subscriber Line for their networks, the Rosedale uses 3Com's Ethernet over very high bit-rate digital subscriber line (VDSL). While DSL can download data at 1.5Mbps, Ethernet over VDSL can reach 10 Mbps. What is more, with fibre-optic cabling throughout the building, the Rosedale's 1.5Mbps leased line from Pacific Supernet is ready to be upgraded whenever traffic demands.

The central Internet device in each room will be an Alcatel Web Touch Plus phone. The phone comes with a 7.5-inch 640x480 colour display and built-in keyboard. The display is touch-sensitive, so the user can still access the Internet when the keyboard is stowed away.

The phone's default home page will be a guide to hotel services and district information. Mr Ronson said the page would also enable online transactions ranging from booking tours to buying the artwork on display throughout the hotel.

"We are looking at integrating the room service menu and also some functionality for booking through the phone itself," he said.

Each room will come with digital cordless phones with a personal phone number and voice mail, which can be used throughout the hotel.

Notebook computers are also available for rent for serious Internet workers.

"There are different ways they can access the Internet from the room," Mr Ronson said.

"They can use our broadband system, which is purely plug and play. The second way is through the Web phone, where we already do the interface and the service provider access. The third way is if they bring their own laptop and they have a modem, they can simply put a cable from that computer into the Web phone and dial out to their service provider on a completely secure line."

This satisfies companies who will not authorise staff to access their networks through third-party service providers, instead issuing a dedicated number through which the traveller can set up a virtual private network back to the office.

For entertainment, each room will have a Kerbango AM/FM Internet radio, which connects directly to the network to provide live radio from around the world.

"It is not available yet, it has not been released, but when it is we will be the first hotel in the world to use it.

"It will simply plug into the broadband line in the room and you will be able to churn through the thousands of radio stations available on the Internet and listen in real time," Mr Ronson said.

Several rooms will also be outfitted with an ISDN line and video-conference facilities.

Technology-savvy guests can also take advantage of Pertlink's newly-released Hotelinmyhand application. This is an electronic services directory and hotel guide for the Palm, Windows CE and WAP phones. Guests booking a room online will be able to download the program to their handhelds and be familiar with the hotel even before they arrive.

The Internet connection continues below stairs, where a cluster of 12 Compaq

servers running Windows NT maintain everything from the firewall to front and back office operations, security, inventory, payroll, billing and call management.

"We add on a lot of hi-tech facilities for the convenience sake of the guests, and we also use the automation to do a lot of undesirable and time-consuming work of the staff, so that we can make full use of the human resources to interact with guests," executive assistant manager Lenny Wong said.

All departments are connected through an intranet, which staff can access for training information, policies and procedures and announcements.

Housekeeping, bar and kitchen staff will use a handheld scanner and bar-coding system to increase accuracy and avoid stock shortages.

"We are trying to eliminate as much paperwork as possible. If you have paperwork then not only is the physical handling unnecessary, but it's prone to error," Mr Ronson said.

The hotel aims to cut back on paperwork by at least 60 per cent in the first year, and to increase that as suppliers are encouraged to adopt electronic invoicing systems.

"We are going to try to persuade our suppliers to come . . . into the technology era as well," Mr Ronson said.

"We do not want to frighten them too early in the process, but later on we can show them the benefits of doing it that way because it will help their processes as well.

"It will cut down their costs of processing an order."

Likewise, every restaurant order will be entered in a point-of-sale terminal which connects directly to the kitchen and the billing system.

A fingerprint recognition system from Hong Kong developer Lucky Technology manages staff access.

The scanner will also connect to payroll and human resources databases, saving more paperwork.

The only system that will not be managed entirely in-house will be the real-time online booking system, which Germany's Serenata will manage.

Prices for the services have not been set. However, broadband access will probably cost about HK$80 per day, while the Web phone will probably be half that.

"It is always a controversial issue," Mr Wong said.

"A lot of hotels impose high charges on their hi-tech facilities and this stops people using them. It is similar to the mini bar . . . You have a mini bar set up but nobody uses it, because you are charging HK$35 for a Coke. So we looked at all these things and asked ourselves whether we want the guests to use it or not."

Drinks in the mini bar will be free.

Story by NEIL TAYLOR
First appeared in South China Morning Post

Terence Ronson
Managing Director
Pertlink Limited