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Hotels Eye Wi-Fi For Customer-Service Boost
By Michael B. Baker
MAY 07, 2007 --
Hotel chains increasingly are adding voice-over-Wi-Fi service to improve service and provide usage options for guests, according to research recently published by New York-based ABI Research.
ABI estimated that hotels provide about 46,000 hotspots worldwide. Higher-end hotels are an area of Wi-Fi hotspot growth, but guest room access lags, said Stan Schatt, vice president and research director of networking for ABI. "They had to install hotspots in public areas in order to get conventions," he said. "They've held back in the rooms because they're still paying the costs of the Ethernet they just had put in."
Upgrading to voice-over-Wi-Fi, however, is attractive to those hotels because it can improve service. High-end hotel chains are using the service to replace such disruptive communication systems as employees' two-way radios. "The employees have a little earpiece and can be perfectly quiet," Schatt said.
There are other service benefits as well. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, for example, is using its wireless network to tie in such services as checkout, food and beverage sales and in-room mini-bars to leverage the back office. Hilton Hotels Corp. is implementing a high-speed initiative that will make its service consistent and bring in the management and customer service aspects of its Internet service throughout the brand by the end of 2008.
An American Hotel & Lodging Association study last year indicated 82 percent of all hotel rooms had wireless capability, a growth from 35 percent in 2004 (BTN, Aug. 14, 2006). More than 95 percent of hotels in the midprice tier and higher had some form of high-speed Internet access.
Free Internet access—wired or wireless—remains much more common in midprice hotels, although there is some movement for availability in the higher tiers, particularly those that focus on business travel (BTN, Feb. 5). Omni, Radisson and Kimpton have adopted it as a brand standard, although other brands have it available in select hotels.
The priciest Internet charges are in Europe, where it's not uncommon for a hotel to charge as much as E25 (US$34) as a daily fee, Schatt said. "That has not gone down, and there doesn't seem to be any real trend toward that price decreasing soon," he said.
Worldwide, ABI predicted the number of Wi-Fi hotspots would increase by 25 percent this year, reaching 179,500. Although almost three-quarters of those sites are in North America and Europe, the rate of hotspot growth in the Asia/Pacific region is such that it will approach the number in North America by 2012, according to ABI.
Even as some U.S. municipalities make wireless access a free service, however, travel buyers shouldn't expect those to counteract hotels' Internet fees, Schatt said. Research indicates that business travelers prefer to use the hotels' service even at a charge instead of free municipal connections.
"They're looking for a higher bandwidth and ad-free performance," Schatt said. "The municipal offerings are not that dependable."
Subscription prices for such wireless networks as Wayport and Boingo have stabilized to the point that they are a feasible option for frequent travelers in lieu of a fee with each hotel visit, he said.
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