Hotel.de AG : Hi-tech Hotels: Tomorrow's technology in present-day hotels

PRESS RELEASE

Hi-tech Hotels: Tomorrow's technology in present-day hotels

London, 2. October 2013 - Tablet computers, flatscreens, 3D games' consoles - at this time of the year modern technology will be on many Christmas lists. While iPad & Co. are already part of the basic equipment of technology-lovers many hotels are going even further. hotel.info, the free online hotel reservation service with over 250,000 hotels worldwide, presents the hi-tech hotels which have already introduced tomorrow's technology.

Iris scanner and iPhone as a door opener

In the hotel Blow Up Hall 50/50 in Poznan, Poland the guest becomes part of a video installation done by the artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer as soon as they enter the hotel. The hotel is full of hi-tech devices: conventional room keys and room numbers cannot be found in Blow Up Hall. Instead every guest is given an iPhone which serves as their room key. The Nine Zero Hotel in Boston, USA has also introduced keyless entry and uses an iris scanner on the room doors.

Remote-controlled rooms

The citizenM hotel Amsterdam City in the Netherlands has gone even further with remote-controlled curtains, coloured room lighting and electronic control of the air conditioning as well as the usual features of fast WiFi and video on demand. The so-called MoodPad controls all these functions, resembling a futuristic on-board computer.

Exercise for your hot coffee

A very unusual hi-tech experiment was started in 2010 in the Crowne Plaza Hotel Copenhagen Towers in Copenhagen, Denmark, where every guest was given a voucher for the restaurant if they used an exercise bike for 15 minutes and thereby generated electricity for the hotel's own system.

Digital door peephole

In Silicon Valley, the legendary birthplace of the computer industry, hi-tech is nothing out of the ordinary. In the Four Seasons Silicon Valley at Palo Alto in the USA there are not only wide-ranging WiFi networks and 100Mbps glass fibre connections but also a printer in each room. Door peepholes are now consigned to history. Instead LCD displays show who wishes to come into the room.

Baltic flair meets multimedia

The Nymphe Strandhotel & Apartments in the Baltic resort of Binz, Germany, offers its guests hi-tech items "made in Cupertino" in all rooms, plus WiFi and broadband internet access, TV, DVD, radio and an iPod docking station. The Nymphe Strandhotel & Apartments is the first Apple Multimedia Lifestyle hotel in Germany which places an iMac in every room for the use of its guests.

Flatscreen TV in the whirlpool

The Sofitel Macau at Ponte 16 is one of the hi-tech hotels in Asia where luxury and state of the art technology meet. Apart from the standard facilities such as WiFi, LCD flatscreens and a DVD player guests are spoiled with rain forest showers. Whoever books the "Prestige Suite" can expect a special hi-tech feature which encourages relaxation: A whirlpool with an integrated TV flatscreen.

A comprehensive overview with more about hi-tech hotels can be found on the hotel.info blog.

For more information, please contact the hotel.info team on [e-mail] or [phone].

About hotel.info
www.hotel.info is a hotel reservation service for business and private customers offered free of charge. The service offers more than 250,000 hotels for electronic bookings around the world. Customers booking via hotel.info achieve significantly better prices in comparison with other booking channels. In addition, hotel.info shows all available room prices for each hotel, so that the customer can always select the cheapest or most suitable room price. All bookings via hotel.info are transferred simultaneously, securely and directly to the respective hotel's computer. This guarantees the unique integration of each hotel's own reservation system so-called CRS or PMS and hotel.de's own reservation system myRES into the hotel.info unified user interface.
Using the experience of other hotel guests, customers seeking hotel rooms can base their decisions to book a room not only on the core information such as room price and hotel facilities, but also on the more than 2 million hotel evaluations and ratings submitted by hundreds of thousands of hotel guests from around the world. Compared with existing rating portals, hotel.info customers can rely on 100% genuine hotel ratings, since only customers who have booked and recently stayed in each hotel are asked for their opinion. hotel.info, the international brand of hotel.de AG, has been created in order to expand in markets in other countries. To acquire new customers and hotels abroad, offices in the UK (London), France (Paris), Spain (Barcelona), Italy (Rome), China (Shanghai), Singapore and Brazil (São Paulo) have already been opened. The high percentage of international business travellers facilitates the Company's entry into new markets. The aim is to establish hotel.info as the leading online hotel reservation service for business as well as private customers.