NEW hotels like the St Regis and the soon-to-open Crowne Plaza Changi Airport are looking for new ways to please, and high-tech gadgetry is one way to go.

The three-month-old St Regis will be the first hotel here to offer National Geographic, Discovery and other high-definition (HD) channels in all 299 rooms when the service starts next month.

All rooms will also be decked out with Full HD 42-inch Sharp Aquos TVs, Bose speakers and wireless Internet Protocol (IP) phones which work like mini-computers.

Soon-to-open Crowne Plaza Changi Airport is snazzing up its rooms with iPod docking stations and 37-inch Sharp Aquos TVs.

At the St Regis, extravagance is the order of the day. Guests can also request for a Bentley limousine pick-up as part of the frills at this 'six-star' hotel.

The Full HD TV sets cost almost twice as much as the HD-ready sets installed in most hotels today. HD programmes are also more expensive.

St Regis butler Hitomi Hayasaka, 29, has to be tech-savvy. The rooms come with phones that are like "mini computers", offering information via a touchscreen.

'It's the St Regis,' said Michael Delargy, IT director of Starwood Hotels & Resorts in Asia Pacific.

'How do you justify driving a Bentley? We have to offer the best,' he added.

The hotel is also in talks with SingTel to offer video-on-demand channels from mio TV.

But its fancy TV can indulge guests in more ways than one.

A Singaporean family, for instance, spent New Year's Day at the hotel, accompanied by games on the Nintendo Wii.

No, the hotel does not provide the game console. But guests can bring their own entertainment devices like the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 to connect to the hotel's HDTV for some high-def action.

Its audio system is also designed for music aficionados.

A custom-made connectivity panel next to the TV lets guests plug in their MP3 players to connect to the Bose speakers for a full-room audio experience.

Even staff are adorned with the latest technologies - wireless IP phones running on Wi-Fi replaces the traditional mobile phones in day-to-day communication.

Staff can make normal voice calls or text each other using the IP phone.

As a result, the hotel expects to save at least $60,000 in internal calls yearly.

Plus new technologies are more 'futureproof'.

'Who knows how technology will evolve over the next five years? But we want to ensure that our infrastructure will last for as long as possible,' said Michael.

This is also the reason the hotel fitted guest rooms with Nortel IP phones.

'They're like mini computers that can do a lot more than analogue phones.'

Guests can get information on places to visit in Singapore and transport, through the phone's easy-to-use touchscreen interface.

'We can always load more fanciful applications later,' he added. These include flight arrival and departure time, weather updates, international time and e-mail.

This article was first published in Digital Life, The Straits Times on Apr 8, 2008.