Eli Houck

Technology has become a mainstay in the travel and hospitality industry, from high-speed internet access in rooms to the ability to book hotels and flights online and find the best rates from daily deals offerings.

But at Seattle’s Pan Pacific Hotel, technology has advanced beyond WiFi service. The 160-room boutique hotel has a new task-management system that allows housekeepers and other staffers to use tablets and smartphones to more efficiently get rooms ready and even anticipate when a guest might need more towels.

We caught up with Eli Houck, the IT director at Pan Pacific, who fills us in on how apps and devices are taking the hotel’s guest services up a notch.

How would you describe your job as IT director at Pan Pacific? Instead of wearing many hats, I wear one big sombrero style hat that pretty much encompasses everything with an on/off button. In essence, my job is to make sure everyone staying or working at the hotel can communicate with anyone else in the world by computer or phone.

What was your IT background prior to joining Pan Pacific? I come from a liberal arts background. But I was constantly drawn to technical troubleshooting and came to be known as the “IT Guy” even when that wasn’t always my title. I worked in the financial service sector for Thomson Reuters in Boston, Chicago and London, and then for Bloomberg in New York City, all in varying technical support roles. I have really enjoyed the way hospitality people take care of each other, and it’s always nicer to help a guest on vacation than a Wall Street trader that just lost his shirt.

Most hotels have WiFi for guests. How has the internet and other technologies set your hotel apart from the crowd? We do have WiFi like everyone else. However, our WiFi is, and always has been, complimentary and, as of last year through our partnership with CondoInternet.net, is blazingly fast. Our ISP Spectrum Networks is among the fastest ISPs in the country, and guests share a 100 mbs line with near 100 percent uptime.

For special occasions, we also have the capacity to provision up to 1 GBs, which, you might just have to trust me, is super fast. There are other technologies that guests don’t see but that we hope enhance their stay, such as the Bartech system in which mini bar charges are posted automatically via fridge sensors without us potentially having to disturb the guest with a manual inventory.

How has the use of technology changed the hospitality industry? How are apps and devices being used to improve efficiencies and customer service? Good hospitality has always been based on face-to-face contact with guests and cultivating relationships. Technology has sped up so many manual processes, from reservations to check-in to turn downs, that it now gives guests the ability to choose the level of service they prefer. Seasoned business-savvy people know what they want and can settle in immediately, and a family of four can take their time and talk to an agent about everything there is to do in the city.

The new devices such as iPhones and iPod Touches allow our back of house to communicate quickly and quietly to serve guests needs without taking phone calls, writing it down and then possibly losing that piece of paper. Guests will soon be able to enter their own requests in their smart phones that will go directly to housekeeping, in room dining or engineering, saving even more steps with impressive efficiency.

The front desk also recently started using the iPad as an interactive concierge to show guests everything from directions to menus.

What is HotSOS2GO? How does it work? HotSOS is a task-management system from MTech that was designed exclusively for hospitality. It allows all departments (housekeeping, front desk, bellmen, engineering, valet) to be on the same page when it comes to guest requests. A guest calls for more towels and a ticket is immediately entered and acknowledged by the runner on his iPod Touch with H2Go. He delivers the towels and completes the job on-the-go, so everyone knows it’s complete. It is integrated with our property management system. So the next time that guest checks in, we can see she might want extra towels. We can be much more proactive.

I understand that the hotel recently added a sister application, REX Room Expediter, that assists in room attendant scheduling. How does it work? The REX logo is a puppy, and our room attendants can attest that this product is their new best friend. In the olden days, room attendants would start the day with a task sheet with their assigned rooms. After all the Do Not Disturbs and Come Back Later signs, room changes and rushes, the sheet would come back with so many scribbles, it that it was hard to decipher.

Now this has become a paperless process -- each room attendant is equipped with an iPod Touch that gives them their own personal queue for the day. After the housekeeper completes each room, the front desk is instantly alerted to the room availability. The guest can check in that much faster.

If there is a room rush, management can simply plug that room in to the attendant’s REX queue without having to leave their desk.

Are you working with third-party companies on the technology? Pan Pacific currently works with a variety of third-party vendors including CondoInternet.net, which provider of our internet service, and MTech, the creator of HotSOS2GO and REX apps. The devices that we chose for HotSOS and REX are made by Apple. But the system works on other hardware, such as Android, Windows or Blackberry

The next step will be to implement an app that the customers will be able to install on their smart phones and make requests directly in to HotSOS without having to call or wait for that message to be relayed.

What’s been the biggest tech challenge you have faced in adopting and adapting new technologies at the hotel? On the device side, the biggest challenge has been with the volume of the iPod Touch, especially for valets who are outside where it is noisy and the device might be in a heavy coat pocket. I’m hoping the next generation will vibrate! There are a few hotel offices that are a couple of levels below ground, surrounded by the concrete of a parking garage, so getting WiFi or cell signal to those areas has been tricky.

How do you measure the success of using apps and devices? The chief measure for success is how much it’s used. We have completed 16,000 HotSOS orders since the beginning of March, almost 90 a day. Because these systems are so customizable, we are constantly adding and tweaking through daily use. The more we use these devices, the more user input we have, and the better it becomes.

What is on the horizon as far as using new technologies like apps and devices? As I mentioned, now that the back-of-house system is in place, the next step to will be to place the power of those requests in to the hands of the guests. In the future, they will be able to order room service before they even get to their room. These mobile technologies will give the guests even more choice as to the level of service they prefer. One utopia would be to remove the front desk altogether, with agents with tablets, greeting curbside and checking in on the fly as they escort the guests to their room. The flip side of that would be the business traveler who checks in when he or she land at the airport and proceeded directly to the hotel room and opens the door with a cell phone! I can’t wait.