Meanwhile, now that they can charge for installation, some larger players are joining the fray. In March, Cisco Systems announced a partnership with Starwood Hotels & Resorts to launch Cisco's new long-reach Ethernet technology and other products, starting with a pilot installation in the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers. In the past year and a half, Sprint has unveiled two high-speed Internet products in Las Vegas, at the Treasure Island and the Aladdin Resort & Casino. The company hopes to finish wiring all 2,567 rooms in the Aladdin by the end of this year. Sprint has one big advantage over its smaller competitors: It can offer a full suite of telecom services - hotel phone systems, pay phones and kiosks - along with high-speed Internet access. "Pretty much every telecom service we offer is at the Aladdin," says Sprint product marketing manager Kyle Murdoch.
Still, only 2 percent to 5 percent of Treasure Island guests are using the service. Murdoch says that's "pretty good," considering many guests are leisure travelers who are less likely to bring their laptops on vacation. High-speed Internet access is actually becoming increasingly common in hotels catering to leisure travelers. The upscale Four Seasons resort in Santa Barbara, Calif., for example, just finished wiring its 217 guest rooms, suites and cottages. According to Ed Galsterer, director of marketing, high-speed access is just another core amenity, like the terry cloth robe, color TV, VCR and hair dryer, offered to every guest.
What will it take for high-speed Internet access to become as common as televisions in the nation's hotel rooms? Some argue that, like TV, it will have to be free. That's still a few years away. Cahners In-Stat's Helland predicts the average price for a high-speed connection will drop to $2 per day by 2004 as budget hotels begin to bring their own rooms up to speed and offer the service at lower prices.
But for DePalma and other road warriors, cost is not the obstacle. "My company has no problem paying $10," he says. "It all comes down to a productivity question." The Ritz-Carlton acknowledges that there were some early kinks in the hotel's high-speed service. "People were not reading the instructions on the box. And some people like to be shown more than to read," says hotel spokeswoman Angela Jackson. That's why the hotel now offers a complimentary technology-butler service to help guests with everything from high-speed Internet connections to handhelds that are on the fritz.
Since his Ritz-Carlton flop, DePalma notes that he has upgraded his laptop to a much more "flexible" machine. "I think that was just teething pain," he says of the earlier experience. For high-speed to work at the Ritz and elsewhere, guests and hotels alike will have to do some growing.
