“Apple’s Enterprise Sales Group has been quietly installing thousands of iMacs, Mac minis, Mac Pros, and Xserves in hotels and cruise ships in a new push to bring the media rich experience of Apple’s retail stores to the hospitality industry, where hoteliers are seeking to deliver personalized, unique experiences that will impress guests and bring them back for more,” Prince McLean reports for AppleInsider.
“In June, Fontainebleau Resorts announced plans to install 22″ [sic] iMacs in all 1,400 rooms of its Miami Beach property now undergoing a $500 million renovation, as well as the 3,889 rooms of its new $2.9 billion, 63-story luxury resort in Las Vegas opening next year. The UK City Inn Group unveiled similar services for its hotels in Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Manchester, and London, noting on its website, ‘you get what you should always expect: iMac computers, free wi-fi and Sky in every bedroom,'” McLean reports.
“Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines began installing Mac minis in its floating hotels three years ago, starting with two of its 3,600 passenger ‘Freedom Class’ ships. That includes the ‘Freedom of the Seas,’ the world’s largest passenger ship ever built. Royal Caribbean is also building an IT infrastructure from Apple’s hardware on its Solstice Class ships for Celebrity Cruises, as well as two of its own new $1.24 billion Oasis Class ships, which will accommodate at least 5,400 passengers each and assume the title of the world’s largest passenger ships when completed a year from now,” McLean reports.
“Those massive infrastructure deployments, involving up to 16,150 Ethernet drops per ship, a 10 gigabit network backbone, thousands of client Macs and racks of Xserves, are adopting Apple’s hardware for the same reasons the luxury hotels on land are: Mac hardware and software offers a differentiating end user polish while being easy to manage,” McLean reports.
Full article here.
Hmm, time for me to start lurking around Royal Caribbean’s want-ads. I’d do a few a tours as an IT guy, no problem.
I recently stayed in a chic, boutique hotel on Capital Hill in Washington, DC, and there in the business center for guests were sleek, new iMacs. Interestingly, there was a customized looped presentation running that explained how to dual boot the iMac into either Mac OS X or Windows XP. I thought it was very clever of the hotel to offer both options in one, not to mention the cost and space savings. Apple can clearly offer a unique service to business or vacation guests who come to personal computing from a wide variety of experience.
I am installing an Apple inside of my ass. I will call it– the iAss. With iAss, I can download things into my toilet. My iAss is capable of uploading, but my central processor doesn’t swing that way. It also has an audio function. Unfortunately, most of what my iAss produces is pure crap, so I only use it when I really have to.
Saw this at an obscure conference over a year ago. Great vision, cool stuff. Way to go Apple!
I believe it was the Fountainebleu that had iPods in every room, a few years ago, so it’s not that surprising that they’ve now graduated to iMacs. Pretty soon, they’ll be issuing iPhones at the check-in desk. Given their room rates, they can afford to!
Can you imagine the spyware and virus load that would be on any PC provided in a hotel room, from all the questionable surfing? Unless you lock the thing down so tight it’s completely useless.
@ theloniousMac
The article does not state Apple is only courting hospitality clients but rather that they are supplying the hospitality clients noted in the story. Where does the article state this is the only thing the enterprise group is doing?
While I will agree with you that there is plenty more for Apple to do to court enterprise customers I am not unhappy to see Apple open new markets. Hospitality is a big industry and like it or not hospitality provides a showcase to let people use Apple technology that might otherwise never use a Mac. These ships and resorts are frequented not only by ‘old ladies’ as you say but also influential business people. There is no harm in getting Macs in front of them. Apple is growing and expanding markets and as shareholder I see nothing wrong with that.
On a recent Alaska cruise with RCCL I and a number of other MacBook toting guests were prevented from using the onboard wireless connections due to RCCL using only Windows networking and not a standard DHCP based network environment.
I spoke to the IT guy on the ship and he understood and told me he would love to turn on DHCP but he was not allowed. He did mention the Mac refit on a number of ships and all those will have Mac friendly wireless.
If you think iMacs, with their tiny little feet are unsafe in earthquakes, just wait until they are put on a rolling cruise ship!!!!!
Nice one Robbie!
Peace.
Well Zune is not around but the loneliest is around. How does it go? Oh yeah.
Let’s do that addition:
“First, I would be impressed if…” blah blah blah then whine some more.
“I would be impressed if…” blah blah blah ad nauseum then whine some more.
“I would be impressed if…” blah blah blah then whine some more.
“I would be impressed if Apple went to BUSINESS SCHOOLS and INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY…” GOTTA YELL TO ILLUSTRATE SOME SERIOUS SOCIAL ISSUES THIS PERSON HAS AND TO KEEP MY AUDIENCE AWAKE….with a blah blah blah chaser then whine some more.
And of course the kicker:
“Putting freaking Mac Minis on cruise ships is quite possibly the most mindless activity I’ve ever seen Apple undertake. Who gives a freaking hoot if some old white haired lady on a cruise ship sees a Mac?”
Actually Theonlyest if you would stop a minute they are not putting freaking Mac Minis on cruise ships….just regular Mac.
And you asked who cares? I do that’s who. I actually have helped little old ladies (and their hubbies) cross the street, and install and support Macs for them. What I lose in money I gain in relationships, great baking, lovely homes and some wonderful human interaction. I would mention the fact that a lot of these little old white haired ladies have some pretty good looking daughters but if I did then you would not be the loneliest mac.
I have watched you bitch whine, spew vitriol yourself all over this site for some time. You just crossed the line when you degrade little old defenseless ladies who are trying to get some pleasure out of life during their golden age….well maybe not so defenseless, see a lot of these ladies happen to be mothers, and a lot of them go on cruise ships courtesy of their successful sons who pay for it and want the best for their mothers. So keep on this denigration at your own risk, but frankly unless you want a severe handle change to theonlyone6feetunder (not by my hand of course I abhor violence) I would strongly suggest putting your head in action before you move your fingertips over the keyboard. There are people that read these boards that are pretty tolerant of most topics that people (even I) spew out but consider little old white haired ladies to be somewhat sacred territories.
Capiche?
@theloniousMac … your views tend to be a bit “rich”.
“When parsimony ceases to be a guideline and is instead elevated to an ex cathedra pronouncement, parsimony analysis ceases to be science.”
I was at the Conrad Bangkok last week. They recently refurbished their Executive Lounge, which now has iMacs exclusively, for both staff and guest use. However, all of them boot to Windows, so I assume they are only interested in the aesthetics.