HOSPITALITY WiFi: Opportunity to increase bookings & drive revenue

These are two articles that do a good job of articulating Hospitality IT Trends. I have elaborated by adding additional info & insights based on multiple years of experience providing technology solutions to some of the finest resort properties in the world. 

According to Trip Advisor’s Five Key Traveler Trends for 2015 , 74% percent of Travelers rank Free/Fast/Reliable In Room Wi-Fi as the #1 most influential amenity when booking an accommodation. This further supports the best practice trend of offering multiple tiers of in-room Wi-Fi and the number of authorized devices per user/account. While travelers continue to want a free Wi-Fi option, over 30% would be willing to pay extra for a faster connection and/or additional devices. As music and video streaming continue to grow, offering a separate, higher-speed connection lets you satisfy guest needs and drive additional revenue. This same model can also create a revenue stream from your conference rooms and/or meeting spaces.

Not to be missed in this equation is the importance of a symmetrical connection. Throwing a 100Mbps x 5Mbps low cost "best effort" (aka NO SLA) NON-fiber internet connection at a mid or large size property will only cause bigger problems down the road... Many properties are enticed by sales language that positions the above circuit as a 100Mbps of Internet access at a very low price point with a short install lead time so they see it as a no brainier. Unfortunately, many often don't realize until its too late that the upload speed is woefully inadequate and with no SLA, when it goes down it typically stays down longer, and more often, than a synchronous 100Mbps x 100Mbps (<-----insert any speed here)  FIBER DIA circuit with redundancy and an SLA.  Yes all the metrics support that the need for download bandwidth is usually greater than upload bandwidth but not at a 20 to 1 ratio. In fact more and more applications and users are consuming increasing amounts of  upload bandwidth (Multiplayer Online Games, VoIP calls, etc). How many Apple devices are now set to automatically upload pictures & videos to the cloud as soon as they have an internet connection (like when the guests return to their room after a day full of picture and video taking activity). Not to mention how many guests are now posting more and larger videos to social media as opposed to a few pictures that require much less upload bandwidth.

 Top 10 Hospitality Industry Trends in 2015 according to Hoteliers – Hotel, Travel and Hospitality News. Sections about Millennial's & Innovative/Mobile Technologies especially informative as follows " mobile check-in, and seamless connectivity across platforms and devices are no longer the future, they are the present. Today, mobile apps are being used as everything from a digital concierge to accessing big data. Geo-location can make it easy to sell guests something that is literally right in front of them. In a recent survey by Software Advice, guests desired local restaurant and hotel restaurant discounts when looking for deals as well as maps with coupons for other deals. Additionally, monitoring guest use of the Internet relative to bandwidth can provide a different data set, perhaps one that will drive down your ever increasing costs of providing ridiculous levels of said bandwidth. Most importantly, when looking at the face of a changing consumer today, technology innovation is paramount. As most have heard, Starwood and Hilton will be having guests check in via mobile phone in 2015."

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