Sheraton unveils Australia's first TelePresence room

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc. unveiled Australia's first publicly available Cisco TelePresence meeting room at Sheraton on the Park Sydney on Wednesday.

The launch of the virtual meeting room was in conjunction with the launch of the same room more than 9000 miles away at the W Chicago City Center in the United States.

The Cisco TelePresence rooms, developed in partnership with Tata Communications, are set to change the face of virtual conferencing for businesses across the world that do not have personal access to such facilities.

Screens in the room, which face a stretch of table, are designed to show life-size and real-time images of participants on the other side of the world with voice-activated cameras.

Guests and corporate clients attending the launch in Sydney and Chicago were given the opportunity to experience the TelePresence meeting suite through a virtual, interactive meeting between the two cities.

In both locations, participants sat at a table and met "face-to-face" with others using ultra-high definition video and superior audio on a high-speed internet connection.

The two properties are the first in Starwood's global portfolio to feature this facility and are available to the public at a per hour rental rate.

Starwood said it planned to build Cisco TelePresence rooms in 10 of its properties worldwide with the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers and Sheraton Centre Toronto to come online in the next few months.

"We intend to make telepresence available to as many users as possible with our global network of public telepresence rooms and our suite of managed telepresence network services for businesses" said Tata Managed Telepresence Services Director Peter Quinlan.

"This opening is just the first step in that direction with many more in other key markets soon to follow this year"