Consider this: a businessman is traveling to Chicago tomorrow. He logs on to Hilton's Web site and decides to stay at Homewood Suites, one of Hilton Hotels' nine chains.

Next, he goes to the hotel's digital floor plan, takes a look at the rooms available, picks one on the top floor, far from the pool but close to the elevator, and checks in online. When he gets to the hotel the next day, his key is at the front desk, and the desk clerk welcomes him by name. When he gets to his room, he finds feather pillows and the local newspaper, just as he prefers.

IT-facilitated customer service is what Hilton is all about. From a do-it-all customer information system to self-service kiosks in hotel lobbies to richly interactive Web sites, its singular goal is to keep customers coming back.

Hilton, which also owns chains such as Doubletree, Embassy Suites, and Hampton Inn, has more than 3,000 hotels and 500,000 rooms in 74 countries. It earned $8.09 billion last year, up from $7.44 billion in 2006, and has plans to open thousands of new hotels in the next few years.

CIO Tim Harvey says Hilton's strong tech portfolio is part of the formula that lets the hotel chain charge more than competitors and still fill up rooms. Revenue per room across Hilton brands is more than 7% above the industry average, and as much as 28% more at Hampton Inn. "Customers are willing to pay more to stay in our hotels for some reason, and the technology enables that," Harvey says.

	Tech helps Hilton charge more and make more, CIO Harvey says Photo by Erica Berger

Hilton doesn't view technology as a cost center, but rather as an enabler of nearly all business processes. The tech team asks, "What value can I add above and beyond the traditional role of IT?" says Chuck Scoggins, VP of distribution CRM and pricing technology. Hilton spends $309 million a year on IT and employs 800 IT pros, 1,200 including contractors.

Hilton's signature IT project is OnQ, a (mostly) internally developed platform for property management, reservations, e-commerce, CRM, human resources, e-learning, and business intelligence, which went live in 2003 after six years in development and includes a mix of proprietary and off-the-shelf technology.

OnQ includes 3.5 TB of data on 22.5 million guests, and the company is spending $20 million to expand it worldwide. Harvey credits OnQ with letting Hilton build a reservation system to book large blocks of rooms and conference areas for $10 million and roll it out ahead of schedule. OnQ has led to a number of other new technologies, such as credit-card activated kiosks at 400 hotels that let visitors check in and out, upgrade rooms, and print airline boarding passes.