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Tags: Hotel Key Cards / Hotel Technology / Marriott Hotels / Courtyard By Marriott Hotels / → All Tags

Up Next in Room Key Technology: Proximity-Based Keycards?

Most of our talk about hotel key cards lately has concerned whether they're recyclable or not, but the whole "ease of use" factor is a pretty important to us, too. They can be fiddly things when you have to insert them a particular way or swipe them at just the right speed, and we've been frustrated by them more than once.

Thankfully, over at the X Room at the Courtyard Newark University of Delaware, the prototype room where they try out lots of new gadgets on real guests, they are looking carefully at proximity-based keycards. With these, we won't need to worry about inserting them in the right direction or even finding them in our bags: just holding them vaguely near the door should open it, and the X Room people are also considering using this technology to sign restaurant checks and access other hotel services, like gyms or pools.

This is the kind of technology trial that makes experimental rooms like the X Room useful – much better than that distressing running alarm clock that forces you out of bed to turn it off.

[Photo: rick]

Tags: Hotel Technology / Marriott Hotels / Courtyard By Marriott Hotels / → All Tags

Coming to Future Hotel Rooms: Alarm Clocks That Run Away From You

Where: 400 Pencader Way [map], Newark, DE, United States, 19716

There's a very special room at the Courtyard Newark - University of Delaware, part of the Marriott brand: it's called "the X-room". That sounds a bit scary, but in fact it's really fun, because this room contains the new hotel technologies and gadgets of the future.

As part of a research project, potential new products for hotel rooms are trialled here for between 6 and 12 months, with real guests. You can book this room specifically or end up there by chance, but in exchange for being able to try out all these new toys, (like the universal battery charger, digital picture frame, touch-screen climate control) you'll need to fill out some survey information to help the research program.

But that extra bit of form filling sounds more than worthwhile to us. We're intrigued by "Clocky", the alarm clock who runs away from you and screeches louder and louder if you don't actually get out of bed (intrigued, we said, but we don't want one ourselves), and the proposed electronic wine chiller sounds interesting too. And if you have 6:50 to spare, check out this video to see the remote-controlled candles which this guy calls "romantic."

So far, guest feedback has inspired other potential gadgets, for example the development of a voice controlled system for operating the gadgets after guests complained that too many remote controls made it confusing to work out how to operate some of the new systems or products. It also became clear that guests need more power outlets in a room, and better located, so they're working on that too.

Related Stories:
· The Hotel Room of the Future is Here at ND [Delaware Online]
· Hotel Technology Coverage [HotelChatter]

Tags: Hotel Hell / → All Tags

But It's a Beautiful Green

Where: 1120 S. College Ave. [map], Newark, DE, United States, 19713

[Ed. Note: Hotel Maven AmandaK had the misfortune of visiting Delaware. Usually, we don't post pictures of Hotel Hell but this was necessary. Enjoy.]

Highway Motel Choice Mistake #451: Believing what you read. We learned this lesson the hard way this summer on Route 95. An unplanned overnight stop in Delaware enroute to Maryland had us thumbing through our coupon book, and the Quality Inn University in Newark promised an adjective-laden swimming pool. Steamy weather and a long drive meant a quick dip would've been the perfect end to the day.

We checked in. Ten nanoseconds after handing over the cash, we looked out the other side of the reception office. There was the pool. See the picture, worth much more than my twenty or so words here. We went straight to bed.

The hotel brochure taught us all kinds of stuff about Delaware (sorry, we didn't even know it was the "first state") and even that Delaware's home to some nice beaches. Next time we'll be finding the motel near the beach and not relying on the swimming pool.

Related Stories:
· Quality Inn University reviews [TripAdvisor]

Tags: Hotel Heaven / → All Tags

Tim Bray sees the future, and it looks like a hotel lobby

Where: 8200 Gateway Boulevard [map], Newark, CA, United States, 94560

The prolific blogger Tim Bray recently glimpsed the future in Newark. Ok, stop laughing, he was in Newark California, not that other Newark.

Tim Bray was staying at the W Silicon Valley this week, which he "unhesitatingly recommends".  He doesn't mention the rooms, but he sets the scene in the lobby nicely:

There's WiFi in the bar, so I was online, and the only people there were me at a neatly-sidelit marble table, a geek on one of the big weird sofas also with laptop, and a couple sitting chatting softly to the bartender. There was some soft techno music pulse, just audible. If you'd put this on a movie screen in the 1950s it would have been a totally plausible Sci-Fi future. In late 2004, it's just a glimpse of what more and more transient spaces are coming to look like.

"Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld, So I can sigh eternally"...Looks like that "afterworld" has arrived Kurt, smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley, just as we suspected.