Hotel & Motel Management - April 21, 2008 - (Page 32)

News H&MM April 21, 2008 | HotelMotel.com Cell phone signals Continued from page 1 City, N.J., have lead in them to create a gold look from the outside. “But the cell company we had partnered with did not plan on putting in antennas,” Gerald Emens, telecommunications engineer, said. “They felt they could externally hit the building and give us adequate coverage.” That was not the case. The lead in the windows reﬂected signals back out to the external towers, and as a result, receiving cell signals inside the Borgata became problematic, Emens said. Now, in an adjacent 42-story tower due to open in 2008, planning has been undertaken for most major cell carriers to put in a cell site within a head-end room in the interior of the property. Meanwhile, the existing facility’s convention and casino areas will be retroﬁtted for cell reception as well, with guestrooms likely to be equipped after that. In retroﬁtting hotels for better cell coverage, some of the onus is on the carriers. Jim Erickson, v.p. of in-building for AT&T Mobility, often ﬁnds his ofﬁce in the trenches of hotel cell reception-enhancement projects. Coverage “has to do with where a building is located in relation to our nearest (outdoor) cell sites,” Erickson said. “It could be [due to] the construction of the buildings—dense, lots of walls, in urban areas with lots of [blockage].” In fact, even some green initiatives can thwart coverage. Erickson said that low-emission glass— which can enable a hotel to save on heating bills—often limits the amount of radio frequency signals that can get through from the outdoor hotel site into the guestroom. Teamwork matters Dealing with these challenges often involves the active participation of Erickson and his ofﬁce. A typical cell reception-enhancement project would involve sitting down with the property owners or managers, helping them ﬁgure out what their reception goals are, and then both planning and costing out a distributed antenna infrastructure that would help meet the property’s cell reception needs, he said. Most often, specialized reception-solution providers are involved in such discussions. People like John Spindler, v.p. of market- ONLINE EXTRA! For more on boosting cell signals, visit www.HotelMotel.com/cellphone. ing for solutions provider LGC Wireless, often ﬁnd themselves participating in the full project cycle of cell reception enhancements for hotels. San Jose, Calif.-based LGC Wireless’s multi-carrier InterReach Fusion in-building wireless system is a signature solution for such cell signal-enhancement efforts. According to Spindler, LGC Wireless would take a hotel’s concept and goals and then perform a site survey that would generate a preliminary design and ﬂoor plan for how cell and other wireless reception could be improved. Such site surveys are not ca- sual undertakings. These efforts must take into consideration more than just how many bars of cell coverage (ﬁve being tops) currently are being attained in every guestroom, hallway and meeting room, Spindler said. What he deems as “building topology,” elements such as elevators, also must be considered. Also, in areas susceptible to windstorms or earthquakes, materials required by building codes might not be friendly to incoming cell signals. Site surveys and other vetting can take months. After the current reception data is aligned with a property’s goals, carriers that serve the hotel’s region are called in to add their views. Depending on hotel layout and budgetary preferences, solutions commonly can involve installation of internal antennas for each carrier. This hardware is often placed in the telecom room. Not all cases are the same, however. Steve Vollmer, chief technology ofﬁcer of the 4,049-room Venetian Hotel Resort Casino in Las Vegas, can attest to that because slot machines with metal facings can degrade cell signals. Planning for the opening of the Venetian’s new 52-story, 3,025-room The Palazzo provided Vollmer and his team the opportunity to plan for optimal cell reception from scratch. “What we did was call the carriers together, as well as LGC Wireless, and drew overlapping circles (of reception) throughout the interior,” said Vollmer. “We then took this to our engineers, with whom we decided on which solutions would work.” hmm@questex.com Developers Continued from page 1 “I certainly take a business approach to what the investments are going to be in the property, but it’s difﬁcult to determine what the calculation is going to be in the near future,” said Phil Sherburne, president of Sherburne Development Group, which currently is constructing the Bardessono Inn and Spa, a 62-room luxury property in Napa Valley, Calif. “If you have a carbon tax, the return on investment of some energy projects starts to really change. So I’ve opted to make decisions that incorporate the potential that the cost of not being green is going to be higher in the future than it is today.” Many green developers echoed that statement. Several speakers gave the nearly 200 developers in attendance something they haven’t seen yet: real ﬁgures on what it costs to build a green property. “Over time, the issue of building green is becoming cost neutral,” said Lance Williams, executive director of the U.S. Green Building Council’s Los Angeles chapter. He outlined what percent of total construction costs USGBC has determined it takes to build a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design-certiﬁed building, depending on which level of certiﬁcation you strive to attain: Platinum: 6.8 percent above cost Gold: 2.2 percent above cost Silver: 1.9 percent above cost Certiﬁed: .66 percent above cost Gary Golla of SERA Architects described using the LEED Green Building Rating System to refurbish a building in Portland, Ore., that will open this summer as The Nines, a 331-room property in The Luxury Collection, a Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide brand. “This is how you want to look at LEED when you use it for a building,” Golla said. “You want to use it as a framework to make the best building that works for you and your product.” Golla outlined 35 points targeted throughout construction that would earn them LEED credits, but also reduce utility costs and earn the developer tax incentives. “We’re looking at more than $100,000 a year savings in energy costs with a 28-percent reduction in consumption,” he said. “In construction and waste management, we were able to divert from landﬁlls over 22 million pounds of debris.” In the end, developer Sage Hospitality paid nearly $530,000 extra to purchase products and ﬁxtures that would reduce energy and water consumption, and another $200,000 for LEED certiﬁcation paperwork. That represented about 1.2 percent of total construction costs. Golla described some incentives that could offset those costs. “This is also key to making these projects work: understanding the incentives that are available, understanding them early in your project, and designing your project to maximize those incentives,” he said. After incentives (Oregon has more available than most states), Golla said The Nines cost a premium of about $150,000 to be LEED certiﬁed, which represented .25 percent of construction costs. “If we played that out against the utility savings, it pays back in 19 months and, after 10 years, the building will save almost a million dollars in utility costs,” Golla said. “Being in Portland, we were able to get away with a lot less premiums than most buildings were, however, this does support this 1 to 3 percent [premium to build a sustainable hotel] that’s often talked about.” Still, presenting uncertain long-term savings and returns on investment may not persuade a lender to provide those extra upfront costs, said Tom Corcoran, chairman of the board for FelCor Lodging Trust. Even the greenest of hotel owners and operators see the dilemma. “What happens frequently is that developers build a hotel and ﬂip it before or right after it’s ﬁnished, so the real value of a green building does not come to fruition until the building has had one, two or three years of operations under its belt,” said Stefan Mühle, g.m. of the Orchard Garden Hotel in San Francisco. “As long as buildings are being turned as frequently as they are, it’s very difﬁcult for short-term investors to realize the gains that would actually materialize over time. For the long-term investors, however, it is a very, very viable solution.” jfreed@questex.com THE GREENBRIER The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., is using LGC Wireless’ multi-carrier InterReach Fusion in-building wireless system to deliver cell services indoors. http://HotelMotel.com http://www.HotelMotel.com/cellphone

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Hotel & Motel Management - April 21, 2008 Contents Vista Affirms Fair Franchising Doctrine HOTEC Panel Explores Green Procurement Spa Revenue Drives Overall Profitability Perspective Legal FAQ Sales Clinic Travel Trends Guest Column Trends & Stats Owners and Operators Feel Pressure to Switch to HD Protect and Clean Stone Floors Coffee On Demand Fitness Equipment Experts Weigh New Builds Vs. Conversions Transactions Ad/Edit Index Marketplace Classifieds Checking Out

Hotel & Motel Management - April 21, 2008

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