Computer Rooms for Airports Planned
SEATAC, Wash. (AP) - Off the plane, into the cubicle, plug in the laptop and get to work. If privacy is an issue, lock the door.
Renting for $8.95 for 30 minutes, the room contains an IBM-compatible personal computer, high-speed phone line for laptops, laser printer, fax and telephone. Nearby is a small conference room, a copy center that can produce color copies and transparencies and a concierge. Long-distance calls and color copies cost extra.
All this, coming soon to an airport near you, if Bruce Merrell and his partners at Laptop Lane have their way.
The first Laptop Lane was opened a month ago on the Delta concourse at the Cincinnati airport. No. 2, with seven cubicles, opens next Thursday in the main terminal at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Next up is Atlanta.
Merrell, the company's president and founder, hopes to open 10 centers, each costing about $250,000, in the next year and 60 at airports nationwide within five years.
Laptop-toting travelers face rigors analagous to those faced by owners of mass-produced cars in the early 1900s, Merrell said.
''Everyone was buying them but no one could go anywhere. Where were the gas stations?'' he asked. ''We're providing the roads and the gas stations so people have a place to drive the technology.''
He cited an Air Index survey that showed 39 percent of the 24.7 million travellers passing through Seattle-Tacoma International Airport last year were business travelers, more than 26,000 a day.
Merrell and his partners - advertising executive Mark McNeely, retail consultant J'Amy Owen, and semi-retired businessman Grant Sharp - said their own surveys indicate 41 percent of the travelers who carry laptops in airports would use a Laptop Lane-style business center. All four are from Seattle.
Merrell said he developed the idea two years ago while travelling frequently for work as a consultant for a Midwest manufacturer.
''When you see someone in an expensive business suit on their hands and knees crawling through an airport looking for a plug-in, you know you've got a market,'' he said. ''I've seen someone unplug a Coke machine to plug in their laptop.''
''Guilty,'' said Paul Swift, a sales representative from Los Angeles, one of dozens of travellers who stopped to watch the final stages of installation at the Seattle airport.
''One night in Denver, I unplugged the candy machine because I had a presentation in Portland the next day. I had to make changes and my battery died,'' Swift said.
In Cincinnati, the business gets as many as 50 customers a day, assistant manager Jane Marlo said.
''When we were opening, one woman came running through with a disc,'' Marlo said. ''She had made changes to a presentation on the plane but needed a place to print.
''She was going to rent a car, drive to a (copier business) and try to make it back before her plane took off. She wanted to know if she could print here. We said, 'That's what we're here for.'''
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