By James Wilkinson

Sydney’s Sheraton on the Park hotel has unveiled Australia’s first Cisco TelePresence suite – a unique conference room that offers true-to-life meetings ultilising ultra-high definition video and audio, and life-size imagery of all participants.

The TelePresence Suite at Sheraton On The Park

The TelePresence suite – which features six chairs in a semi-circle and three 42-inch plasmas on the other side – was revealed to the media yesterday (Feb 24) with an interactive simultaneous meeting that featured participants in Sydney, Chicago, Paris, Santa Clara (California) and Singapore.

Starwood’s Sheraton on the Park and W Chicago City Center are the chain’s first two hotels to feature the TelePresence suite, a unique meetings offering that will soon feature in hotels across the globe – including New York, Toronto, Dallas, San Francisco, Brussels, Paris, Hong Kong and Frankfurt – by the end of 2010.

“The TelePresence suite is only a week old, but we already have a number of bookings,” Starwood Pacific Hotels’ regional vice president, Sean Hunt, told SpiceNews.

“We are getting a lot of interest from corporates who are asking for this facility and we have made it easy with pricing ($500 per hour), so I think it will be an easy sell.

“In certain circumstances, it’s a great alternative to long-haul travel,” he said.

Cisco TelePresence suites aren’t new to the market as the company has 550 customers worldwide. However, almost all are exclusive installations for corporations for internal virtual, real-time meetings.

The real-time technology of the Cisco TelePresence suites create the feeling of a live boardroom meeting, even if half of the participants are more than 10,000 kilometres apart.

For more information about Starwood Hotels Cisco TelePresence Suites visit
http://www.tatacommunications.com/telepresence/.