In Room 114 at the Courtyard by Marriott hotel at the University of Delaware, it takes more than reaching over and pressing the snooze button to silence the alarm clock. In addition to bleating an ear-splitting tune at the designated wake-up time, the gadget jumps off the dresser and hides in a corner, forcing sleepy users to get out of bed.

The showerhead in the bathroom has 70 percent stronger water pressure than the average fixture, but uses 70 percent less water.

When visitors arrive, there's no looking through a peephole. Instead of glass, the hole in the door contains a digital video camera connected to an LCD screen mounted on the inside of the door.

Room 114 is unique for now, but researchers at the University of Delaware hope it won't always be that way. They're using the experimental "guest room of the future" to test new technology in a real hotel environment.

Visitors and UD students studying hospitality can try the products. Their feedback helps industry insiders figure out which gadgets should be rolled out at hotel chains worldwide and which need more work.

"It's a living/learning lab of lodging technology," said William Sullivan, managing director of the hotel.

An experimental hotel room was always part of the plan for the Courtyard Newark-University of Delaware, which opened three years ago on the Laird campus north of downtown Newark. The idea started gelling about six months ago when Robert Nelson, chairman of UD's department of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management, made a deal with a friend who is an executive at Nintendo to test the video game company's products at the hotel.

At the same time, the department's faculty was talking about Guestroom 2010, a model hotel room making the rounds at industry trade shows that showcase new technology.

"Guestroom 2010 is perfect, it's wonderful — but nobody uses it," said Cihan Cobanoglu, an associate professor. "So we said, let's take the same ideas and put it in this room and see if they really work or not."

Cobanoglu, who co-manages the project, began calling companies to donate gadgets to UD to use in the room for six months to a year. In return, companies could test their products and get feedback from real hotel guests.

FEEDBACK HELPFUL

In addition to "Clocky," the moving alarm clock, the environmentally friendly showerhead and the LCD security camera, the room features flameless electric candles, a digital picture frame and an energy-management system that adjusts lights and room temperature when it detects that guests have left the room. There is a bedside digital assistant that allows guests to control room temperature, lighting and a digital radio from under the covers.

The "X-room," as project participants call it, was designed to be fluid.

Right now, it includes about 17 experimental features, which collectively are worth about $50,000. There are more on the way — including a flat-screen, high-definition TV, a wireless electricity panel, an electronic wine chiller, and a version of Nintendo's Wii designed with hotels and business travelers in mind. Some products will be removed eventually, others will take their places and a few may return after changes.

Guests can stay in the X-room by choice, but some have been booked by chance. All are given a survey so the UD researchers and developers of the products can collect data about what travelers like and don't like.

For example, recent guests complained it was hard to figure out which of the suite's six remote controls operated which gadget. Cobanoglu is hoping to research and develop a voice-recognition program that would control all the machines.

Comments from users at other hotels persuaded First View Security, creators of the digital door viewer, to build a video camera that wouldn't visibly protrude from the peephole and potentially attract vandals, said Dan Fowler, project manager for the Cleveland-based company. He looks forward to data from the X-room.

"That's market research to us," Fowler said. "The analysis that they've done there does tremendous good for us because we get a lot of good product feedback."

THE COMFORTS OF HOME

While hotel rooms always contain the standard bed, desk and dresser, travelers' increased reliance on technology is changing their expectations.

"It used to be that we'd only have two electric outlets per room," said Sullivan, the hotel's director.

"That used to be all you needed," Nelson said.

"The last time I was staying in a hotel, I had my phone charger and I had my laptop, and I had to move the bed to get to the only free outlet."

Researchers had to get approval from Marriott to add the gadgets and make the room's layout different than the chain's standard, Sullivan said. He said technology can be a powerful marketing tool for hotels because certain features may persuade travelers to seek out a particular chain.

"It gives a lot more credibility to the research when you do (pilot a product) in an academic environment," Sullivan said. "A lot of the products may end up being considered for use worldwide. But making that decision is a huge decision because there are hundreds of thousands of rooms. We're interested in what travelers are interested in."

Increasingly, travelers are interested in hotel rooms with all the comforts of home, he said. That includes high-speed, wireless Internet, wide-screen TVs and high-quality bedding.

The Courtyard-Newark is testing a stain-resistant mattress cover from W.L. Gore on all of its beds, including the one in the X-room.