CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) --Business travelers read and write an endless stream of electronic memos, letters and documents, but printing copies of them on the road has often been a challenge.
A new software is changing that. With use of a pre-assigned code, it allows documents to be sent to and stored in remote printers in -- for example -- hotel or airport business centers, and printed out on demand.
Hilton Garden Inns recently announced that all of its nearly 25,000 guest rooms in North America have or will soon have printing capability to go along with the high-speed Internet access already available.
Internet access, as well as printing services from PrinterOn Corp. of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada are free of charge, Hilton Garden says.
Doubletree Hotels, another Hilton brand, says its 41,000 guest rooms will all have high-speed Internet connections and PrinterOn facilities by the end of 2004.
Most locations will charge $9.95 per day for Web access but the printing service will be included in that price, a spokesman said.
Wireless environments in guest rooms, meeting rooms and other common spaces make it possible to order up a print from almost anywhere in the hotel, PrinterOn spokeswoman Colleen Dietrich said.
"Some hotels also want to offer a service that can deliver your printed material back to your room," she said.
The entire travel industry spectrum is a good bet for deployment of such printing technology, according to Electronics for Imaging, which offers a similar service called PrintMe.
Derrick Meyer, a spokesman for that California-based company, sees airport rental car offices as a possible venue, with arriving customers often in need of a hard copy of something able to print it out even as they are picking up their car.
PrintMe already operates at airports including Japan's Narita, Singapore, and several U.S. locations through Laptop Lanes, the in-airport business centers.
Meyer said there is a "rapid roll-out" in progress now involving the printing technology in over 400 Internet access-enabled Marriott hotels in the United States.
The printing systems from both companies can also work with personal digital assistants such as the BlackBerry.
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