A Swindon hotel is making a determined drive to attract more business customers.

The Marriott has introduced a new conferencing system as part of a nationwide rollout to 39 hotels. It follows on from a successful pilot across 12 Marriott hotels, which saw inquiries for internet access and other services increase four-fold.

It has been brought forward as a result of the downturn in the industry following the events of September 11.

Eva Duyndam, general manager of the Swindon Marriott, said: "We are determined to ensure that as a company we emerge from the downturn stronger and ahead of the competition.

"We see investing in technology to improve our customer offering as a key part of achieving this.

"Our strategy is to increase our conference sales as a percentage of total sales and we believe that these improvements will help drive this.

"We are exploiting the trend for companies to reduce travel costs by using alternative methods of communicating such as video conferencing.

"It makes financial sense to spend around £2,000 on a half-day video conference between Chicago and Swindon rather than paying over £15,000 for 10 business class fares to fly everyone to Swindon."

The Marriott is working with partners STSN to provide the equipment and technical expertise to all 39 hotels.

STSN is currently installing communication links to all 27 additional hotels so that they can offer immediate connection (unlike most hotels which have to arrange for installation of high speed internet access for conference clients, which can often take several weeks to set up).

The Swindon Marriott now provides a one-stop-shop to conference organisers, able to offer a menu of conference technology services and products, which they can package up to meet individual requirements.

Derek Risk, group IT and tele-communications manager said: "We found in the pilot hotels the technology we are able to provide bought customers who have never used us before.''

Paula Humphreys, Sales and Marketing Manager, Swindon Marriott Hotel 01793 561232 e-mail paula.humphreys@marriotthotels.co.uk