Tech-Savvy Luxury Hotel

Innovative Hotel Offers Luxury and Tech Treats

Innovative Hotel Offers Luxury and Tech Treats
By Rosanne Dunkelberger

Add “hotelier” to Rick Kearney’s impressive resume. The chief executive officer and president of Mainline Global Systems and developer of Summit East is the owner of a new Staybridge Suites extended-stay hotel, which opened in February. Kearney said a hotel always was part of the plan for the 116-acre office park housing more than 20 technology-related companies, located just east of the U.S. Highway 90 exit of Interstate 10.

While Staybridge Suites rooms are considered luxury accommodations, Kearney chose to upgrade amenities for his hotel. So each room – with a neutral palette and chocolate- and mint-colored appointments – includes flat-screen HDTV-TVs, DVD players, iPod docks, granite countertops and mini-kitchens. Upgraded suites also feature Bose wave radios and remote-controlled fireplaces. One of the new hotel’s most enjoyable features is the “Just Like Home Theater,” where guests can kick back in leather recliners to watch movies and sporting events on a 56-inch plasma-screen TV with surround sound.

Kearney, who has built a $500-million business out of technological innovation, also has brought his tech savvy to the hotel. Each room is equipped with a new-style computer system that combines the best attributes of a personal computer with a mainframe.

Guests can send and receive e-mails; create documents; edit PowerPoint presentations; print, store and download their work – and after they leave, the computer is wiped clean, with no worries that anyone else could access their history or logons. In fact, the hotel is a demonstration site for what Kearney calls “a new paradigm in computing.”