Extracts

• Now, many guests arrive at a hotel after leaving homes equipped with some serious bandwidth, plus countless channels and unlimited streaming movies. On the road, these travelers come armed with an array of mobile devices
• "Universally, I can look at my guest satisfaction scores, and I can say that people generally are going to comment about three things overall: They don't like paying for Internet, the speed is too slow, or they have difficulty connecting,"..
• "If it's too slow, it goes off, or it drops, the guest will remember that longer than he'll remember if his coffee was cold or his BLT didn't have chips with it when it arrived."
•  "It's one thing having a basic service for free, but it's important to have a service that works at a reasonable cost. It's better not to give it away free than to have it not working."
• Another solution gaining momentum is tiered billing, which essentially offers several classes of fees, based on usage levels... "Make sure your provider has tiered bandwidth options. If he doesn't, don't go there,"
• Whether a hotel opts to charge for broadband, owners can expect to sink dollars into infrastructure anyway..... nowadays, more access points are often needed, especially because the newest breed of Apple devices are notorious for having weaker antennae.
• "What we're finding is that hotels that got wired as little as three years ago are now having to get their Wi-Fi people back in to increase the density,"
• Today, IT professionals are urging owners and developers to invest in the best fiber-optic connectivity possible, then configure the rest of the data architecture from there.
• Greater value, and hopefully fewer headaches, can also be gained by relying on a provider who bundles wired/Wi-Fi connectivity with other services such as TV, video, gaming, etc. because the platforms can all utilize the same infrastructure.
• For now, experts say all hoteliers can do is provide the most bandwidth possible in their properties because it's a near certainty guests will use it. That may involve charging a nominal fee per guest to offset the rising costs of hardware upgrades, but in the long run guests are still more willing to pay for a service that works than one that leaves them lagging.