Portigo is an innovative, best-of-breed virtual concierge that focuses on serving the business traveler and vacationer with robust content with an easy-to-use in-room interface. Developed by CNI exclusively for the hotel industry, Portigo provides hotel guests with unlimited access to an extensive array of nearby options for dining, entertainment, recreation, business services, shopping, personal care and more, all from the convenience of their hotel room.

The Portigo Software is designed to deliver dynamic content based on the guest’s profile information gathered at check-in. The key element of the software is the fun, friendly, and easy-to-use interface for the guest. The in-room portion of the software is a walled garden of CNI controlled content and an Internet-browser interface, without the “look” of traditional browsers. CNI designed and built a client-centric appearance, providing a higher comfort level to hotel guests. Through partnerships with Internet content providers, Portigo can provide news, sports, ticket sales, flight information, weather reports, and shopping customized to the guest. For example, while visiting Dallas, a guest from Atlanta touches the sports button and the first items shown are Atlanta teams.

When a hotel guest arrives at a CNI-powered hotel, Portigo is branded as a hotel service, promoting the hotel’s capabilities and convenience, and remains a persistent part of their hotel experience throughout their stay. Guests can quickly and intuitively locate the precise type of content they’re interested in, and make reservations, purchases and plans at any time. Hotel guests and any visitors to use the hotel are free to use the service and browse its contents to meet their needs, at their leisure and free of charge at any time.

Portigo provides a profitable, economical and comprehensive solution for hoteliers and merchants to offer travel related products and services free of charge from the security and comfort of the guest’s hotel room. Portigo genuinely enhances a hotel guest’s experience, through a fun and easy-to-use phone and connectivity terminal.

Portigo is a true thin client with no moving parts so there is no noise for the guest and fewer points of failure. Additionally, the terminal was designed to come apart easily for easy replacement of parts that are damaged or fail. The hardware is monitored automatically 24/7/365 by the Network Health Management System which sends CNI an alarm if there is any failure of a part or the entire terminal. Portigo’s user-friendly touch screen enables hotel room guests to easily access a multitude of free services and optionally purchased products and services. Portigo also makes it possible for hotel guests to surf the Web or retrieve email while leaving their notebook computer at home.

Portigo's integrated keyboard provides the hotel guest with the functionality of a personal computer. A hotel guest may comfortably type a standard letter, modify documents, update files, check email and access the Internet for additional information not already provided within Poritgo’s dynamic screen content.The design allows CNI to easily have field upgrades of the hardware and remote upgrades of the software.

Multiple devices such as laptops, iPods, digital cameras and MP3 players are supported through the USB, RJ45 and optional side jack pack.  The use of USB ports allows Portigo to integrate devices and new technology innovations. 

ADVERTISING:

JMP Securities on December 20, 2005 raised its global advertising forecast for not only this year but for next year and beyond. The firm now expects the global online ad market to grow at a 25% clip annually for the next five years, up from a previous forecast in the low 20% range. JMP now expects online advertising at $13.2 billion in the U.S. this year, or 4.7% of total advertising revenue, to soar to $35.9 billion in 2010, when the Internet will command 11.1% of all ad dollars spent. "We expect large-budget advertisers to continue shifting an increasing percentage of their traditional ad budgets to the Internet," JMP analyst William Morrison said.

Portigo is an advertiser's dream because pitches can be targeted to specific audiences and delivered rapidly at low cost.  Better yet, it's possible to know who sees the ads and to accurately gauge the response.  That's light years ahead of a magazine ad with a street address that means nothing to a new visitor to the city or a hotel directory that provides limited answers that are probably out of date.

Concierge Networks offers three pricing choices: cost-per-action, where the advertiser pays a fee based on the number of user responses; cost-per-click where the advertiser pays a fee based on the number of clicks the ads generate and cost-per-thousand impressions where the advertiser pays a fee based on the number of times the ads are shown.  Concierge Networks pays out about 45% of the revenue generated to the hoteliers and channel partners under the year one (post-production) revenue plan.