
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 8, 1995                   TAG: 9506140021
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TRAVEL AS FAR AS YOU CAN, YOU STILL CAN'T LEAVE OFFICE

During a stay this week at Hotel Roanoke, Sandra Babin needed something that few hotels would have kept on hand a decade ago. She needed a computer.

Hotel Roanoke, in fact, has computers. Babin on Wednesday became the first guest to rent one. By midmorning, she sat at a terminal in a small room writing a paper for a college-level human ecology class she is taking in Richmond, where she lives.

If she had wanted, she could have made a copy of her work and faxed it to her instructor, without venturing out of the hotel and into what was for her an unfamiliar city.

Guests at most hotels, except for cut-rate inns, now expect access to office equipment and services so they can work on the road.

Hotel Roanoke intends to satisfy that need with its recently opened Business Center, located in the hotel's conference center and open to hotel guests and the public.

"It's a wonderful advantage. You can't hang out by the pool all day. There's work to be done," said Babin, personnel director for the Richmond Association of Realtors.

Such convenience comes at a price. Copies are a dime each. Sending a fax costs $5 for the first page and $1 for subsequent pages.

Using one of the hotel's two Internet-connected computers costs $5 an hour. Secretarial service costs $10 an hour. Large copying jobs that the hotel sends to an outside copy center carry a 35 percent markup.

At one time, hotels wouldn't have thought twice about referring a guest with a report to write or document to duplicate to the nearest copy shop. Typewriters in a hotel "would have been more of a luxury," said spokeswoman Kathryn Cochran of the American Hotel and Motel Association in Washington, D.C.

In the mid-1980s, a few hotel chains began to cater to business travelers, who represented a big chunk of the chains' clientele. Others followed suit.

Hotel Roanoke, which has computer outlets in all guest rooms, rents cellular phones and laptop computers for use in the hotel. The conference center features another business amenity: meeting rooms.

Starting in about three months, the Radisson Patrick Henry in Roanoke will rent guest rooms equipped with fax machine, phone outlet in which to plug a portable computer, and large desk with adjustable lamp, said General Manager William Carder.

The Holiday Inn chain - considered a trend-setter in hotel amenities because it added swimming pools and in-room television before its competitors did - bought its first computer for guests at its Tanglewood location in Roanoke six or seven years ago. It didn't get much use, General Manager Gerald Carter said. The hotel has since installed computer outlets in all guest rooms.

The demand for typing, copying and similar services "comes and go," Carter said.

by CNB