Scripps Howard News Service
In-room technology doesn't mean a hotel guest has to look at a lot of black boxes and blinking lights.

As hotels become increasingly high-tech, some are cloaking their 21st-century features with a look that goes back to the 18th century. Others, meanwhile, are using those modern bells and whistles as a highlight of their decor.

The Dorchester hotel is quickly becoming known as offering the best-available technology to its guests, but you'd never know it walking into one of its rooms. The hotel recently completed a $16 million makeover that offers an all-in-one computer/Internet/entertainment system encased in decor that evokes 18th and 19th century English and French country houses. The multiple plugs for laptop hookups are hidden behind a panel in what looks like an antique desk. The flat and plasma-screen televisions, printers, fax machines, copiers and CD/DVD players are stored within custom-built chests that also look antique. Each room features hand-blocked wallpaper, English chintz, silks, cottons, cashmeres, damask and floral prints. There's not a modern hint anywhere upon this first glance of The Dorchester's lap of luxury. The Lanesborough, which offers the same all-in-one system from Neos Interactive, similarly hides its technology behind rich, 1820's, Regency-style furnishings.

But as high-end hotels start boasting more and more technological gadgetry, many are offering a decor that goes right along with it. Across town near the theater district, Le Meridien is nearly finished with a $35 million renovation on its Waldorf Hotel that leaves barely a trace of its "terribly traditional" past. Le Meridien's chief executive, Juergen Bartels, introduced a new concept called Art + Tech, starting at Grosvenor House on London's Hyde Park and now at the Waldorf, the Le Meridien Minneapolis and two other hotels in Vienna, Austria.

The "art" of Art +Tech describes a minimalist, modern setting in bold but simple color palettes with art such as etched glass designs over the bed and twisted metal chandeliers overhead. The "tech" half of the concept includes free-standing plasma-screen televisions with video and music on-demand as well as on-line billing. The rooms also offer free high-speed Internet access; electronic "do not disturb" and "service" display screens outside the room; electronic lighting controls for any mood; and an in-room safe that can store and recharge a laptop.

"The idea was to give the guests what they really want and put it in a very fresh, new setting," Waldorf General Manager Amanda Scott said.

Art+Tech doesn't stop in the rooms. The Waldorf transformed its ballroom and conference facilities into high-tech havens. The Waldorf now offers sophisticated audio/visual systems for its events. The hotel's main ballroom and conference room includes a large built-in screen; a data and video projector that lowers from the ceiling; movable plasma display screens; recessed moving lights around the room's perimeter; and lighting bars at each end that house a range of theatrical and stage lighting.

The hotel's technical staff says the offerings are so broad that groups with specific needs don't ever have to bring any of their own equipment.

"Boys -I mean, businessmen -they say, 'wow'," Le Meridien spokeswoman Julia Clark said.

Clark and other hotel officials say guests will continue to see more hotels upgrade their technology as their interiors become worn and need renovation.

As several chains in the United States move to improve their in-room technology, Hilton Hotels has its own "university" to study upgrades at the Hilton Garden Inn in El Sugundo, Calif., near Los Angeles' LAX International Airport. Want to be a guinea pig? Check into Room 267, otherwise known as the Room of the Future. The room has what's becoming de rigueur at high-tech hotels -a 42-inch plasma screen television. It also has a CD/DVD player, motion detection lights that come on when you enter the room; a biometric room safe that uses the guest's thumb print as the code to open it; and free high-speed Internet access, either through a laptop or the room's television.

By 2020, travelers should be able to stay at any hotel and not worry about bringing their laptops, said Geoffrey Breeze, marketing director for Neos Interactive, the London software company who installed the technology systems into The Dorchester and the Lanesborough.

"The hotelier has got to care about the quality of technology and entertainment services they provide," he said. In the future, he added, "you really will not carry your laptop."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.shns.com)