A sad Sayonara for the Hotel Okura

Much has been written about the upcoming demolition of Tokyo's landmark Hotel Okura's main building ever since it was announced in May last year. Widely met with incomprehension that a hotel generally described as a "modernist masterpiece" would be so cruelly dispensed with, it even prompted a "Save the Okura" online petition by Monocle's Tyler Brulé. Sadly, all outcries were ignored by the owners who are pushing ahead to make way for a 38-storey mixed use development which will include a 550-key hotel, re-imagined for our times and in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

I was fortunate to have stayed at the Okura many times over the years, and again last week, which gave me the opportunity to reminisce and for one more time enjoy the totally unique atmosphere of this soon to disappear landmark.

More images of the Hotel Okura below.

While it is true that it is a specifically Asian trait to prefer new over old, you have to wonder why so many other major cities have managed to hold on to their landmark buildings, many of them hotels. Hong Kong's Peninsula, Singapore's Raffles, New York's Waldorf Astoria, Paris' Ritz  Hotel, to name but a few, have not only been refurbished over the years, but in many instances meticulously renovated to evoke the age these buildings were initially erected. A recent example that comes to mind is Fairmont's restoration of Shanghai's famous Peace Hotel to its former glory, preserving many elements of its historical 1920's and 1930s past.

So why not the Okura? Isn't it enough that it was the first 'international' hotel in Tokyo, that it played host to an impossibly long list of celebrities from all walks of life and - most importantly - that its architectural vision, inside and out, exemplifies mid 20th century modernist architecture in an accessible way? Well, apparently not.

But perhaps looking at the point in time when it was built provides a clue here. All the aforementioned hotels were built in the late 19th or early 20th century in that opulent, colonial style that we now associate with 'grand' and 'old world'. That there has not been another style that has similarly taken our imagination since is profoundly sad. The Peace Hotel symbolises a point in time in the past, the glories of the colonial empire long lost, but now brought back to glory in capitunist China, no less. 

Why the Hotel Okura should not be awarded the same respect is incomprehensible to me. Is the workmanship really that shoddy that it cannot be renovated? Tokyo, after all, is deepest earthquake territory which would have, even in the early 1960s, ensured quality workmanship (not to mention that we are talking about Japan here, the one place where workmanship to this day is taken extremely seriously). While the guest rooms have been renovated rather uninspiringly over the years, judging from how meticulously the interior of the lobby area has been designed and preserved, this hotel was built with longevity in mind. 

But perhaps people at large simply aren't that much into modernist architecture, Mad Men not withstanding. Nice to look at, but for my money please give me something else.

With the main building confirmed to be closing for the last time on 1 August, I guess it is futile to go on about it. The less spectacular South Wing of the building, which was added in 1973 and will be spared the wrecking ball (for now), is due for a quick spruce up from 1 July until 1 August and will serve as the hold out hotel until the new tower is finished in 2019, so you can still get a little whiff of the Okura magic until then. And if you can't make it, take a tour of the hotel below.

IPTV: The New PMS?

The recent China Hospitality Technology Alliance (CHTA) Reload conference in Shanghai was once again a great opportunity to catch up with technology developments  in the hospitality sector. There were some interesting presentations, too. One on wearables, for example, put the recent hype about Smart Watches and their applications firmly in its place by pointing out the current shortfalls, such as battery life, being tethered to a 'mother' device and, most importantly for the hospitality industry, the lack of standardisation and adaptability which is always the greatest impediment whenever consumer electronics enter the enterprise space.  

Needless to say that I found the presentation on IPTV the most relevant.

IPTV Slide Presented at the CHTA meeting

The message from the chair of the IPTV Standardisation group was clear: IPTV is a key customer service platform and as such is just as important for a hotel as PMS. This is quite an exciting shift from just a few years back when IPTV was seen as 'nice to have' as opposed to 'essential'.

The PMS system is of course the holy grail of a hotel operation as it facilitates hosting hundreds of different people, night after night, smoothly and efficiently - albeit by predominantly operating at the backend. IPTV on the other hand, being the connection between hotel backend and customer facing frontend, is the point where enterprise and consumer interface - the holy grail of guest communication if you like (post check-in, naturally). The two together are a powerful package that, if done properly, combine hotel operation and guest communication on one integrated platform.

Standardisation: walking a fine line

The important point with any attempt at standardisation is that it shouldn't curtail the inherent flexibility of an IPTV system. This is a very fine line to walk indeed. Network set up, cabling constraints, content and features - where do you draw the line?

Also, equally important as defining what IPTV should be is to define what it should not be. IPTV is not a computer, and it is not a mobile device - although it should interact and enable both, and across operating systems. But this is why mobile- and computer oriented services such as We Chat, Skype and social media sites should have no room on it, at least not in their original formats. A hotel we have deployed recently, for example, is curating posts from their Twitter, Facebook and Weibo pages and putting them as images on their IPTV platform on a monthly basis. That's perfect: it's entertainment and it has been customised to work on the TV screen.

But with 72% of web page views now done on mobiles, why try and squeeze 

Share of webpage views, January 2015.
Source: wearesocial.net/blog

the square peg of (say) Weibo into a round hole like IPTV, specifically if the user experience can never be as good as on a mobile (think on screen keyboards...)? And let's not forget the myriad security and bandwidth issues that come with turning the TV into a web browser. Again, it may be ok at home, but a hotel is an all together different environment where rules are set by the lowest common denominator: the worst possible scenario, such as someone downloading masses of pirated movies, clogging the bandwidth for everyone else, or people browsing onto dubious sites infested with viruses.

Here IPTV plays a key role as the facilitator that fits the spare pegs into round holes by integrating guests' own devices, rather than trying to replicate them. 

No doubt these points, and many more, will be mulled over as the IPTV Standards group is preparing its recommendations. But no matter what the final document will look like, let's hope it will contribute towards drawing the lines clearer as to IPTV's role in hotels for all parties.