Hotels, even Restaurants, Embrace Virtual Meetings as way to Profit from Business’ Lower Appetite for Travel

By Sarah Duxbury

The San Francisco hotel recently opened a “GoThere” meeting studio, equipped with Cisco’s telepresence technology, which could bring virtual meetings to the masses. Cisco, which competes in the telepresence market against Pleasanton-based Polycom, has built over 1,000 of these suites, but only in its own offices or for private corporations; the public has had no way to use the technology.

Virtual meetings and conferences have gained ground in recent years, as improved technology met the recession. Many companies slashing travel budgets, or recognizing that others were, turned to virtual meeting presenters like San Francisco-based ON24, Menlo Park-based Unisfair and Bellevue, Wash.-based Social27.

Such technology also allows for meetings in non-traditional venues, like Morton’s.

The steakhouse chain has teleconference capabilities powered by Velocity, the Pittsburgh-based high-definition broadcasting company, in its restaurants across the country, which it also uses for special events like the release in the fall of Mondavi family reunion wine.

The new Cisco suite at JW Marriott in Union Square, however, takes those meetings off the desktop and recreates an intimate, face-to-face meeting that can link multiple locations.

The room has six large leather chairs arrayed in a semi-circle facing three large screens. Each of those can link to another suite, and the people there appear life size.

Worried about a second’s delay in sound or movement, resulting in that dubbed Kung-Fu film quality? Not here, said Donna Collings, general manager of JW Marriott, which was the third Marriott in the country to open one of these suites.

There’s no time lag, so non-verbal cues come across in real time. The technology is not exactly new, but it’s more refined than what people may be used to seeing in conference rooms or on desktops.

Marriott expects to have 20 high tech meeting rooms operating by the end of 2010. This summer it is opening suites in London, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Sao Paulo.

Currently, including those in Cisco’s offices, there are 16 public suites on five continents.

While that is far from universal, there will be 40 public meeting rooms by year’s end, said Astrid Gintz, senior marketing manager at Cisco.

“We are rapidly expanding,” Gintz said. “The idea is to serve the business traveler, to extend so the traveler can do more business, and more business at a Marriott. They will be able to connect to thousands of rooms.”

And the more widely available the public suites, the more valuable Marriott’s investment becomes.

“We have added meetings we could not have gotten before” with the new technology, Collings said. “As the network grows larger, we anticipate even more.”

JW Marriott has already seen the room translate to hotel nights, as when a Bay Area resident had a 5 a.m. teleconference and stayed overnight the night before.

“The way I see it, the most important thing for me is time,” Collings said. “Our customers also feel time is a luxury, and this can enhance their quality of life” if it means fewer lengthy business trips.

Collings said the suite has not impacted the hotel’s traditional meeting business; this is just one new revenue stream. Use of the suite costs $500 per hour, though she declined to say how much it cost the company to build and install it.

JW Marriott is the only suite of its kind open to the public in San Francisco.

Other hotel chains, such as Starwood and Taj Hotels, are starting to add these kinds of suites, but neither company has plans to add them to their San Francisco properties.

Collings hopes the suite will help the hotel seem cutting edge.

Imagine the possibilities,” Collings said.