Proving you're never too old to learn, Yeoh Siew Hoon picks up new insights about the hotel business and dreams of bathing under a rainbow and taking aromatherapy showers.

It was interesting meeting people on the other side of the fence, as it were, the folks who supply equipment to the hotel industry.

There I was at HOTEC Asia, and learning all about the stuff that we as guests take for granted – the keys you open your door with, the rain showers that reinvigorate you, the plates you eat off, the ovens from which come your crispy, wood-fired pizzas …

These folks sell their hardware with heart. Their eyes gleam when they talk to you about their hot stone ovens, their non-slip flooring (can we have more of those, please, those marble floors are so treacherous on high heels), keys and cards – bigger please so we don't lose them, bathroom accessories, porcelain and coffee machines.

I learnt there's a machine on the market now that does coffee and tea in one. It's called Jasthe, and it whips up 12 types of teas from Slim Beauty to Buleberry (sic) to Mango Green Tea.

Tea is the next hot drink, I was told. Teabucks, here it comes. The Jasthe man tells me there are already 60 tea stores in Japan.

Based in Beijing, he predicted that within 12 months, a Chinese branded coffee house will take the world by storm and topple Starbucks off its perch.

"It's already happening in China. Starbucks is too slow. It takes six months to approve a new flavour. The Chinese shops do it in one day," he says without breathing.

Will the Chinese and Japanese allow such an ancient tradition such as tea to be commoditised? "Yes," says the man. "Look at the Italians and their pizzas and coffee. They had no choice. The fast food brands just came in and took over."

Then I learnt about a touchless key card where you don't have to, yes, touch the card to the door, just point it at a zone and, voila, your door will open.

The next big thing in "access control" – that's the industry jargon – is wireless technology – where information from the key/card is transmitted immediately to the hotel operations centre so that they know where you are anytime you present the device.

No more playing hide and seek.

They tell me it's useful for times when say, you're in the gym and an important phone call comes for you that you just have to take and the operator knows where you are. Bring that mobile along, duh.

Then there's the stuff we eat off and with – porcelain, chinaware, cutlery, table accessories. The European brands with names such as Rosenthal, Schonwald and Sambonet are strong in the deluxe category although Japanese brands are making a strong showing as well.

They are also facing commoditization and competition from lower-cost manufacturing bases such as China and India, and they try to differentiate themselves through brand and design, and the finer details.

"We've been making our porcelain in the same town in Germany for the last 150 years," said Jurgen Weltz, who looks after Asia, for Schonwald.

Manfred Lang is a familiar face to hoteliers in Asia. To him, it's about relationships. "95%," he says. "The product and materials are basically the same, but we have a brand and I have the relationships."

The good old days are over though when they used to sign multi-million dollar contracts. To them, 1993 was the turning point. And while things are looking up again, the market has forever changed. "The old days are never coming back," says Lang, with a leather jacket over one shoulder and cigarillo in his mouth.

Wilkinson (right): We now have 100% Asia production.

Brands such as Sambonet, Rosenthal and Schonwald have not moved manufacturing bases to Asia because they feel that would mean they lose their differentiating point, but Oneida has.

"We moved to Asia, lock, stock and barrel," says Stuart Wilkinson, vice president & managing director of Oneida Global Food Service. "We now have 100% Asia production."

Beyond lower costs, the move also puts the company in the heart of the fastest growing market in the world, says the Dubai-based Wilkinson.

"There are people who would have you believe that if you manufacture in Asia, the quality is not that good but today, the quality is on par with anything that's produced in Europe. The key is quality control."

Lower manufacturing costs however do not mean lower prices for hoteliers because material costs have increased due to demand outstripping supply. "The emergence of China and India has put severe pressure on materials – nickel has gone up by 3,000% in price," says Wilkinson.

The fight for materials means the bigger boys have a better chance of getting their hands on it than the smaller companies. "We place orders for several million dollars, so guess who they'll supply to first," says Wilkinson. "Smaller players will be squeezed out."

I then ran into another German – there are plenty of Germans in this sector of the hotel business – who does nothing but bathroom lights. It's called light-emitting diode (LED) technology. Wikipedia, my guru these days, says an LED "is a semiconductor device that emits incoherent narrow-spectrum light when electrically biased in the forward direction."

So what they are doing is cut through the top of the water pipe to render it transparent to the naked eye so we can see the water turn red when it's hot and cold when it's blue? How cool is that?

Imagine a rain shower embedded with LED lights? It would be like showering under a rainbow.

I then suggested to him an aromatherapy shower – why not have showers that emit scents as you bathe?

Cleopatra, eat your heart out.

Yeoh Siew Hoon's other writings can be found at www.thetransitcafe.com . Get your weekly cuppa of news, gossip, humour and opinion at the cafe for travel insiders.