Good Call

Road warriors bemoaning impersonal hotel accommodation will get some relief the next time they check into Hong Kong’s Langham Place Hotel, hongkong.langhamplacehotels.com. The 665-room property is already known for high-tech conveniences like streaming video on guest-room phones and hotel-wide wireless Internet access. Now the hotel has introduced customization features to its phones, allowing them to be programmed for each guest.

Many hotels will note a returning guest’s favorite pillow or drink, but, with your permission, Langham Place will also collect your most frequently dialed numbers and load them onto the touchscreen phone in your room, so that home or head office need only be a fingertip away. Staff can also program the device to display stock quotes based on your own portfolio, as well as news and weather bulletins from your hometown. The Web-enabled phones can even be pre-tuned to your favorite online radio stations. Best of all, if you forward snapshots of your loved ones prior to your arrival, they’ll be beaming back at you from the phone’s display screen the moment you walk in. The pictures, and other aspects of your profile, can be updated online as you fancy.

The new enhancements add even more heft to phones that already allow guests to send free e-mails and view flight and destination information. And guess what? If you can tear yourself away from the screen, they’ll even let you order room service.