How has the importance of technology changed in designing the guest rooms?
It’s changed big time. We have a great IT department in [Gemstone headquarters] Park City, and that is something that’s extremely important to us. We understand the traveler nowadays. We’ve worked a deal with Microsoft where we have quite a bit of Microsoft products in our hotels. When we do an opening they will send people to the hotel to train bellmen and front desk clerks so if at 10:30 at night someone calls and says ‘My computer isn’t working,’ we can send someone into the hotel to help them out. When we’re doing a new hotel, we’ll spend months on iPods and clock radios and TVs to make sure it’s the right technology. We don’t want to get stuff that’s so complicated it turns off the guest. Even I go into some hotels — other hotels — and you have to read instructions to turn the TV on. We don’t want to do that. The guest doesn’t have time to figure out 18 buttons to turn the TV on or set the alarm clock. If for some reason they do have a problem, our front desk staff and bellmen a
