The Getaway: A Hotel Room With 140 Characters

Then came the “digital detox” vacation — the no-cellphones, no-Internet-allowed response to increasingly inescapable and seemingly addictive technology.

Now comes the backlash (or at least the appearance of one). The first “Twitter experience hotel” (a k a Sol Wave House) was introduced this summer in Majorca, Spain, where guests can ping requests to a “Twitter concierge” using hashtags like #fillmyfridge; flirt from poolside Bali beds by tweeting numbers printed atop the beds, like “How’s it going #balibed10?”; and sip cocktails while checking their smartphones for a live feed of virtual conversations bubbling up from every corner of the hotel.

Meliá Hotels International, which owns more than 350 properties, including Sol Wave House, is pioneering the concept amid the still rising popularity of smartphones and social networking. The Internet is in more pockets today than ever before. In July the International Data Corporation, a research group, said the worldwide smartphone market experienced 52.3 percent year-over-year growth. (In the United States, 56 percent of adults own a smartphone, up from 35 percent in 2011, according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project surveys.)

The number of people on social networking sites is also growing. About 1.3 billion people worldwide are now using social networks (that’s about 82 percent of the global Web population), up from about 1.2 billion last year, according to comScore.

Sol Wave House was refurbished two years ago, but the Twitter theme — the “share the love” signs at the front desk, the Twitter suites and concierge — is new.

“The social night-life scene is significant, so we already had a ripe environment that we were looking to augment,” said Tony Cortizas, vice president for global brand strategy of Meliá, which is based in Palma de Mallorca. The hotel itself is shaped somewhat like an amphitheater, with rooms and balconies that allow guests to peer down at public areas with pools, daybeds, wave machines and D.J.’s. “The clientele coming in are younger,” Mr. Cortizas said.

And according to the Pew Research Center, which has been conducting one of the more thorough studies of Twitter, Internet users ages 18 to 29 in the United States are the most likely to use the network, making a Twitter theme hotel a distinct way to speak with that demographic.

Mr. Cortizas said he marvels at how young people are living today. “It’s so completely normal for someone to be looking down on the street and walking into people because they’re looking at their device,” he said. “For the generations that are literally growing up that way, it’s really normal.” Sol Wave House is striving to “bring what is normal and every day for these guys and give them a sandbox to play in.”

That sandbox includes a Twitter concierge that guests can instruct via tweet to “Get the Cava on ice” followed by “1 bottle, 4 glasses to the solarium,” as one visitor did last month. There are images of mustaches on mirrors in the rooms, encouraging guests to tweet goofy selfies. And on Friday afternoons at the height of the season, the concierge uses a pool party hashtag (#twitterpoolparty) to summon sun worshipers.

To create a measure of privacy, all virtual interactions take place within an internal community available only to guests through an app and the hotel’s free Wi-Fi. Upon signing in with their personal Twitter accounts, guests can see who else is online, and send virtual kisses to one another. A recent peek behind that digital curtain showed guests uploading photos of their burgers, asking the concierge if there were any Russians visiting the hotel (there were) and participating in online contests.

“In our business,” Mr. Cortizas said, “rooms are rooms and suites are suites, but in the end it’s always about what you are doing to deliver an experience to a customer. We were looking to try and do something that would differentiate us, and we were trying to do something that would be kind of fun.”

So why Twitter? What about that other prominent social network? For one thing, competitors are already using Facebook to attract travelers. Take Ushuaïa Ibiza Beach Hotel, owned by the Palladium Hotel Group, which enables guests to instantly update their Facebook status by swiping their fingers on sensors around the grounds.

Mr. Cortizas said the other major reason for emphasizing Twitter is that it is especially popular in Europe, from which Sol Wave House draws many guests.

Hotel Guests Turn Away From TV and Toward Streaming Media

Mr. Markidan, who spends 40 percent of his time traveling on business and is an elite participant in the Hilton and Hyatt loyalty programs, takes his MacBook Pro and iPad with him on the road and watches all television programs by streaming them on his laptop, using a portable router to extend the Wi-Fi signal in his hotel room.

“For a lot of people my age and a lot of people in general, the way we consume entertainment at home is changing,” he said. “I no longer have a cable subscription — the way I watch entertainment at home is the same way I watch it on the road. I have a Hulu subscription, Amazon Prime and Netflix.”

Guest-room entertainment “is not an amenity that will drive my decision to stay at a hotel,” he said, adding, “I’m a lot more concerned with loyalty program perks.”

James Lingle of Highlands Ranch, Colo., a consultant to hotel companies and guest-room entertainment service providers like LodgeNet’s competitor iBahn, observed: “If you look back, typically the first thing a guest would do when they walked into the door of a hotel room would be to turn on the TV. Now people bring their entertainment with them, tablet-based devices like an iPad, accounts and memberships like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus, and they want to be able to use them.”

LodgeNet’s decline directly reflects these changes. According to its bankruptcy filing, the number of hotel rooms it served globally dropped to 1.5 million in 2011 from 2 million in 2009. It provided guest-room entertainment services to most major hotel chains, usually by installing and maintaining free televisions and offering video-on-demand entertainment, for which it and the hotels received fees. LodgeNet’s sales in 2011 were $421.3 million, a 21 percent drop from a high of $533.9 million in 2008.

Colony Capital, a real estate and hotel investment firm in Los Angeles, led a group that invested $70 million in a controlling interest in LodgeNet, based in Sioux Falls, S.D., and brought in a management team of former Starwood, Fairmont and Hilton executives. LodgeNet, which emerged from bankruptcy in late March, also signed an agreement with DirecTV to jointly offer entertainment to hotels and hospitals.

The revamped LodgeNet faces strong competition from companies including Swisscom Hospitality Services, based in Geneva; iBahn, based in Salt Lake City; Guest-Tek, of Calgary, Alberta; and Roomlinx, based in Broomfield, Colo. All are developing systems that let travelers consume entertainment the way Mr. Markidan does — via the Internet, frequently through subscriptions they already have and use at home, either through Wi-Fi or a direct cable connection between their laptop or tablet and the guest-room television set.

Different types of hotels have different policies regarding Internet access. Many less expensive hotels offer it free, while more expensive ones often charge for it. What’s expected to happen next, speaking broadly, is that using the Internet for e-mail will be free, while many hotels will charge for uses requiring a lot of bandwidth, like  downloading or streaming videos, with the cost tied to the amount of bandwidth required.

“We will give customers more short-form content at very attractive prices, affinity packages of sports channels, just-missed TV, video games, as well as movies currently in theaters,” said Michael Ribero, Lodgenet’s new chief executive. “We want to give them the opportunity to watch what they want, even if it’s through Netflix and Amazon Prime.” He said LodgeNet will no longer provide television equipment in hotel guest rooms in exchange for video-on-demand fees. Instead, DirecTV will offer hotel owners lease financing for TVs, freeing capital that LodgeNet can invest in product and service improvements.

Ex-Giants star Taylor wins hotel hookup lawsuit

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NFL Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor has won a lawsuit that tried to hold him accountable for sex with a 16-year-old girl in a hotel room near New York City.

The jury returned its verdict Friday after hearing testimony from the now 19-year-old woman and Taylor.

Taylor gave a thumbs-up to a friend in the spectator area when the verdict was announced.

The former New York Giants linebacker acknowledged that he had sex in 2010 with a prostitute. He denied accusations that he ignored obvious signs she was a teen runaway in distress.

His accuser had claimed that an abusive pimp forced her to have sex with Taylor for $300.

The encounter occurred in a hotel room in Montebello, just north of New York City.

She was seeking unspecified damages.

via Ex-Giants star Taylor wins hotel hookup lawsuit – NYPOST.com.

Lindsay Lohan Assaulted: Star Allegedly Attacked In New York City Hotel Room (UPDATE)

Lindsay Lohan was assaulted in the New York City hotel room where she was staying Sunday morning, by a man she met at Chelsea nightclub 1 Oak, WNBC reports.

Law enforcement officials told WNBC that the “Mean Girls” star began arguing with the man, identified as California resident Christian LaBella, over photographs he took of Lohan with his cellphone that she wished to delete. The altercation took place in Lohan’s 15th floor room at the Union Square W Hotel in Manhattan, while a few of Lohan’s friend were present.

Lohan reportedly told police that when she confronted LaBella about the photos and confiscated his phone at approximately 4:30 a.m., LaBella responded by throwing her on the bed, leaving scratches on her hands.

Sources told TMZ that Lohan ran out of the room, and Lohan claims when she later returned, LaBella choked her, then threw her on the ground and climbed on top of her.

TMZ’s sources say that one of Lohan’s friends was able to pull the man away. Lohan then pulled the fire alarm to call for help. Cops arrived at the hotel and arrested LaBella on two misdemeanor counts of assault and two charges of harassment.

The actress’s father, Michael Lohan, told the New York Daily News that he has not been able to reach Lindsay. As for LaBella, he says, “Wait ’til I get this guy.”

This is only the latest incident in what is turning out to be a stressful month for Lohan. Less than two weeks ago, she was arrested in NYC after allegedly tapping a pedestrian with her Porsche and fleeing the scene. And just last week, she was hospitalized for an asthma-related issue after a weekend of partying.

UPDATE: 9/30/12, 8:30 p.m. ET — Lindsay’s mother, Dina Lohan, tells HuffPost Celebrity’s Rob Shuter, “She is resting home. Her asthma is bad.”

UPDATE: 9/30/12, 6:30 p.m. ET –The Wall Street Journal reports that criminal charges against LaBella have been dropped. LaBella now only faces a harassment complaint, but according to a law-enforcement official, he cross-filed the same complaint against Lohan.