A Mason-based tech company plans to announce at the Asian American Hotel Owners Association trade show in Philadelphia next week that it has signed a contract with a five-star hotel chain.

Connect Call Global has reached an agreement with Taj Hotels to provide communications services in its five-star hotels in New York, Boston and San Francisco. CCG provides Wi-Fi, TV and phone service for hotel chains. That might sound simple, but it’s a lot harder than just getting an Internet hookup at an apartment.

“You’ve got bigger systems in place in a hotel. You’ve got reservations, you’ve got marketing, you’ve got the front desk, you might have restaurants or spas. The level of routing and control is different. The equipment on site is different,” CCG president Chris Lutts told me. “A lot of hotels will go get their hardware and service from different providers. We eliminate that need.”

Typically hotels will contract with one company to provide the hardware – like wireless routers or in-room telephones – and then another to provide the actual Internet or phone service. Some companies like AT&T can provide both, but often hotels will go with the provider who offers the lowest cost.

Even if a hotel gets its Wi-Fi hardware and Internet service from the same provider, the support for each of those is usually handled by a different division, which can mean a customer or hotel guest could be transferred to multiple people before finding out why they can’t connect to the Internet, Lutts said.

Because CCG provides the infrastructure and the Internet service, it can prevent one of the most common problems hotel guests have: connecting to the Internet, Lutts said. If the pipes and service are provided by two different companies, the hardware company can only tell whether or not a guest is connected to the Wi-Fi, not why they can’t access his or her email.

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/