Away on Business: Putting the Ease in E-Mail

By Michael Conlon

CHICAGO (Reuters) - E-mail may be hard to live with at times, but for many doing business on the road it has become impossible to live without.

Fortunately, dealing with the inevitable backlog of vital, personal and nuisance notes that stream daily through electronic gateways has become easier to deal with.

Wireless connections have come to places like hotel lobbies and airport corridors.

It‘s even possible to read and write e-mail on a hotel room TV screen.

Guests, for instance, who check in at W Hotels -- a chain of 19 upscale properties open or soon-to-open in several cities -- find a portable, cordless keyboard sitting on the desk.

They can flop onto the bed or stretch out in an easy chair with the keyboard in their hands and connect to the Internet -- for a charge of $8.85 per 24 hours -- accessing Web sites and any e-mail any accounts available by that route. The mail to be read and what they write shows up on the big screen TV.

The rooms are also equipped with a fixed high-speed Internet access connection for laptops, but the small, lightweight keyboards provide a welcome flexibility.

Desks in the rooms are also equipped with combination fax machines and printers.

The W brand is a relatively new entry into the ever-changing hotel world, positioned somewhere above the Westin but below top-of-the-line properties like St. Regis, according to Melinda Speck, director of business sales and sales development for the group.

W is part of the Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide which includes St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, Sheraton, Westin, and Four Points by Sheraton.

There are W hotels in New York, Atlanta, San Francisco, Seattle, Honolulu, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Chicago, Newark and Sydney, Australia, with others due to open in Miami, San Diego and Mexico City.

In Chicago, the group has two hotels, both in renovated properties. One occupies a former high-rise Days Inn motel on the Lake Michigan waterfront and the second has turned the old Midland Hotel, once a not-quite-venerable early 20th Century property in the city‘s financial district, into a showcase bearing the W brand.

A non-discounted single room at the latter runs in a range from $200 to $250 a night.

SITTERS FOR STRANDED PETS

Sudden business trips can threaten to leave a pet stranded. Short of a willing neighbor, there are some options.

Check out the Web site http://www.petsitters.org, operated by the National Association of Professional Pet Sitters. By entering a zip code, a pet owner in-need can find the nearest service certified by the group. Services include overnight care, daily dog walks and even plant and home care.

The pets covered range from dogs and cats to birds, reptiles, fish and small animals.

And Fodor‘s Travel Publications reports that in the last three years nearly 9 million U.S. travelers have shared a room on the road with a pet. How many were traveling on business isn‘t known but the company has a new book that identifies properties where pets are allowed.

Called ``Road Guide USA -- Where to Stay with Your Pet‘‘ (ISBN 0-676-90207-3), it costs $18 and covers 2,169 major U.S. cities. It is available at bookstores.

(Question, complaint or pet peeve? Send the to Away on Business, c/o Reuters, Room 1170, 311 S. Wacker Dr., Chicago 60606. Or, via Internet, E-mail Mike.Conlon(at)Reuters.com using the ``at‘‘ sign on computer keyboards. We cannot promise personal replies, but will try to address letters as space permits.)



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