Last year's much-heralded opening of Hong Kong Disneyland helped add to the tourist figures, but perennial favorite Ocean Park continues to improve its attractions as well. Despite initial glitches, the Ngong Ping cable-car should also help keep the immigration gates turning at Hong Kong's land borders and Chek Lap Kok airport.
But twists and turns in the hospitality business come from all vectors: few places can compete with Dubai's new seven-star hotel, for example. Eco-tourism, adventure-tourism, scuba diving: all popular, none available in Hong Kong. And it's been decades since anyone climbed a Hong Kong peak to wistfully gaze at the then-forbidden landscape of the People's Republic.
Hotel systems
Hong Kong's hoteliers can't afford to remain quiescent in this volatile environment. "In the old days, the first thing a guest would do after they checked in was phone home," said Kenneth Rogers, executive assistant manager of the Langham Hotel Hong Kong in Tsim Sha Tsui. "Now, the first thing they do is get online."
Rogers said that his hotel recently replaced a legacy telephone system (an NEC PABX) that was 18 years old-positively Jurassic by IT standards. "Our priorities for a new system were a combination of factors," he said. "Our prime consideration was [providing] the technology that guests need-price was not our main consideration. We wanted to provide the latest technology and have strong support [for that technology]." Rogers explained that most of his hotel's guests are seasoned business travelers, aware of the current level of available technology in the marketplace, and expect a Hong Kong business-level hotel to meet those standards.
"We did need to replace the [legacy] system due to age, spare parts, and maintenance issues," he said, "but we also wanted to be competitive. The hotel industry must be progressive-always evolving and refurbishing to be competitive in the marketplace."
The IT team conducted a comprehensive tendering process with a short-list of three vendors, eventually settling on a Nortel-based system. "The Nortel product is the heart of the whole system," said Rogers, adding that all guests now enjoy broadband in their rooms both wired and wireless, IP telephones, in-room fax, messaging and other facilities.
Quantifiable benefits
"The prime driver was the age of the legacy system," said Rogers, "it was time to change." But he added that the new system allows the hotel to keep 100 percent of revenue from sales of broadband, not the revenue-share arrangement with their previous broadband provider-a boost to ROI.
David Wong, managing director of Nortel Hong Kong, Macau and South China, said that key customers using his firm's products in the region include the Sheraton Hotel and Towers and Shangri-La in Hong Kong as well as the Langham; the Macau Emperor and Venetian casinos in Macau, and Nansha World Trade Center in southern China. Wong added that his firm aims to "deliver enhanced communication solutions that support innovative services, improve guest loyalty and bolster profitability."
"As travelers become more familiar and dependent on mobility tools and penetration of WLAN-enabled laptops [increases]," said Wong, "guest preferences will favor hotels that allow them anytime/anywhere access to the information that they need."
Wong said the value of wireless access would initially be driven by the needs of business users. "Visitors attending a business event or taking advantage of the hotel's services also find value in having WLAN access," he said, "as most cannot afford to be out of touch with their work for any extended period."
The Nortel chief said that from the hotel's perspective, the business value of a wireless access strategy is threefold: "attraction of business based on the hotel's wireless capabilities, opportunity for revenue from user access fees and the opportunity to increase the consumption of services from guests and visitors who choose to work in lounge or restaurant areas."
"From a business case perspective, the benefits of investment in a wireless infrastructure extend beyond the value of enhanced delivery of guest services and incremental sources of revenue," said Wong, who added that increasing staff productivity was also important in assessing the value of a property-wide WLAN deployment.
"We needed a system that was upgradeable," said Rogers, who added that the new system helped management communicate guests requests more effectively, and examine CRM facets. "We can now track calls and sort by booking, source, cancellations, giving us more data," he said. "If a guest orders room service, the system can send an SMS to the room attendant, creating a record of each transaction. This helps us deliver timely accurate service, and also allows staff can greet guests by name."
Rogers added that the system came online May 7, and the hotel has already seen productivity gains after less than two months of operation. "In the future, we expect to see further utilization of XML applications and more up-to-date info for guests promoting restaurants and other hotel services," he said, "because now we can deliver it on a color touch-screen and use the phone as the point-of-sale."