By Steve Shellum

When Max Fankhanel checked into one of those new super-high-tech hotels in Dubai, with guestrooms containing more gadgets than NASA�s control centre, he was faced with a dilemma: how the heck do you turn off the TV? 

Given that Fankhanel is Shangri-La�s group director of engineering and deals with technology every day of his working life, that particular incident reflects just how far some hotels have lost the plot on what hospitality is all about. 

It also neatly illustrates the approach that Shangri-La is most definitely not taking towards inroom technology. Although the group realises that IT is crucial to the success of any hotel operation, it does not see it as the be-all and end-all.
�We are not tech junkies,� says Anand Rao, who is responsible for IT strategy throughout the group. 

�Technology has to justify itself in terms of both customers and staff. It should be used to enable services, not replace them. People want to see a human face and, ideally, they should not see the technology.

�Take wake-up calls, for instance: hotels that expect you to dial in masses of numbers or codes just so you can get up on time in the morning are missing the point. Guests don�t want their bedside consoles to look like a 747 cockpit. Technology has to be simple and non threatening.�

Rao gives another example of IT gone astray. 

�Some hotels spend millions of dollars to become what they believe is energy efficient, with motion or heat detectors installed in all the guestrooms. But it doesn�t work because if a couple is staying in the room and one of them decides to go out, then all the lights go off.

�It�s much more efficient and cost effective to simply put up a sign saying, �Please help conserve energy and turn off the lights when you leave the room�.

�That leaves the guest in control of his or her environment, which is how it should be.�
According to Rao, Shangri-La is in the process of making all its hotels �future-proof�. 
�The systems we have chosen to install will last us for a long, long time,� he says.

The focus is on groupwide initiatives, with hotels being wired for high-speed data access, internet and video conferencing, using CAT-5, vertical cable and fibre optics. 
�In the past, a lot of companies that were in the business of wiring up hotels for IT went bust because they had to invest in the infrastructure, but the usage wasn�t there,� says Rao. 

�We own the cables, so we stay in control.�

He believes that one trend that looks like it may develop further is wireless internet access. �We are laying the pathways now and will have the infrastructure ready for whatever our guests decide they want.

�The hotels have been fairly well automated in the past and we are just putting in the new infrastructure. It�s much cheaper to do it now than later.� 

He estimates that current guest usage of inroom internet facilities is 3-4%. �It�s more of a service than a revenue driver.�

Other IT initiatives being undertaken by the group include replacing existing property management systtems (PMS) with new central reservation and yield management systems, and revamping its groupwide sales-management systems.

�We are putting more and more emphasis on control,� says Rao. 

�At one time, PMS was the main focus because everything was connected to it. But the focus is now turning to central systems, with every guest history recorded in detail.�

The group has teamed up with Micros Fidelio to develop new systems that work across the chain. �Standard solutions that work for other groups don�t work for us, but this is a very cost efficient way of ensuring we develop exactly what we need,� says Rao. 

�There are things that a domestic hotel chain in the US could do, but in our case we deal with 10 countries and currencies, so consolidation isn�t always possible.�
The group is also developing a new database platform, and is working on the challenge of incorporating Chinese characters into its systems.