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Chicago’s Smart Lobby

Upscale hotels in classic settings are spending billions to restore their lobbies and floors to their past grandeur. However, that can often run up against

Chicago’s Smart Lobby

Dec 1, 2008 12:00 PM,
Dan Daley

Upscale hotels in classic settings are spending billions to restore their lobbies and floors to their past grandeur. However, that can often run up against the needs of the other hospitality imperative these days, which is to get as much information technology onboard as possible.

The Fairmont Chicago Hotel, a 45-story neoclassic beauty built in 1987 and recently comprehensively renovated, decided to face that challenge wirelessly. The property opted for DisplayIQ, a Wi-Fi digital-signage system that’s also interactive on several levels. In addition to being able to get the usual cues from dynamic digital signage indicating which groups might be using ballrooms or conference rooms, guests can also use one of several touchscreens in the lobby and on meeting-hall floors to search for flight information coming in via IP connections from O’Hare and Midway airports.

The system can also send information such as directions to a location as a text message to the guest’s cell phone or PDA. The same system creates a two-way dialogue between guests and the hotel’s spa and restaurants.

“Running cable to do this would gave been a very expensive proposition,” says Fairmont Chicago GM Andre Zotoff. “Without having to run wires, the ROI suddenly becomes very attractive.”

DisplayIQ is a division of RoomNet, a hospitality-targeted broadband and network services company in Santa Ana, Calif. The company does its own systems work, installing NEC or LG Electronics displays with integrated 3M touchscreen overlays. With the Fairmont installation, as with most projects, DisplayIQ’s interactive data runs on a private segment of the hotel’s existing wireless infrastructure.

“It’s essentially interactive digital signage placed in a hotel environment,” says RoomNet president Brian Cunningham. “It takes it to a whole new level.”

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