Bandwidth – Editor’s Note

Yes it is June! HITEC is just around the corner and we hope you will be joining us there. Please come by Booth #812 and swipe your card. You just might win yourself one of those hot new Apple Watches. We will be demonstrating the hot hot hot BeyondTV Wireless Streaming System as well as providing consultation on creating a robust Wi-Fi network.

This month we spent some time with Matt Willis, Assistant General Manager, of Larkspur Landing in Folsom, California. Larkspur is part of a family of eleven all-suite hotels conveniently located in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. They specialize in extended stay guests and have some special needs in their Wi-Fi networks.

If you are interested in upgrading your Wi-Fi network, download our new services brochure. If you would like our BeyondTV Brochure, our Wireless Streaming Study, or info on Fusion Gateways they are just a click away.

We close with some fun vids we have curated just for you.

We would love to hear from you – feel free to write and let us know what you need and want.

Larry Jaffe
editor@hotelwifi.com

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HITEC Expo – World’s Largest Hospitality Technology Show

June 15-18, Austin, Texas – Booth 812

Every year hospitality and technology professionals converge at HITEC and this year promises to be better than ever. Hotel Internet Services installs uncompromising Wi-Fi networks to the hospitality industry. Simultaneously, our Fusion Gateways are setting new standards. Additionally, we recently introduced the revolutionary in-room entertainment system – BeyondTV.

• The BeyondTV Wireless Streaming Player is the first fully integrated hospitality streaming product on the market today, enabling the guest to have a complete in-home entertainment solution right in their hotel room. What Chromecast, Apple TV, Roku and Amazon Fire TV bring to the home, guests can now recreate in their hotel room with the added benefit of being able to avail themselves to hotel amenities and services. BeyondTV allows today’s travelers to view their own content on the TV whether it be Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, etc. BeyondTV represents a major milestone in in-room entertainment.
• Fusion Gateways enables you to combine multiple Internet pipelines to satisfy the ever-increasing bandwidth demand and achieve maximum utilization of each feed thanks to our advanced bandwidth aggregation and load balancing mechanism.

You don’t want to miss this! Make sure you stop by booth 812 and you might win an Apple Watch! Just scan your card.
Schedule a Demo>

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Installation Spotlight

We recently spoke to Matt Willis, Assistant General Manager, of Larkspur Landing in Folsom, California. Larkspur Landing is a collection of eleven extended stay, all-suite hotels, conveniently located in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. The hotel is located near Sacramento, capitol of California. They offer many amenities for the extended stay traveler including free Internet service. Hotel Internet Services was contracted to upgrade their existing network.

As an extended stay establishment, providing services for their guests is a little more intricate than for the usual business traveler. This is especially the case when it comes to Internet access where guests, because of the duration of their stay are much more dependent upon the establishment’s Wi-Fi.
Here’s Matt’s take on it:

“In a transient hotel where people are only staying one night or two at the most, I think there is always that thought that I’m leaving in a day so it isn’t a huge deal.  At our hotel, we have people stay with us for weeks, months, even years at a time.  For them, they need the internet to be fast and reliable daily to maintain a normal working and personal lifestyle.  Of course, any hotel can have a demanding guest, regardless of length of stay.  However, if a guest is going to come stay with us for a month and they aren’t impressed or wowed right off the bat, they could possibly check out early and we could lose a month’s worth of revenue.  Things have to go just right to maintain a longer term guest in my opinion.”

Wi-Fi is provided throughout Larkspur Landing. They firmly believe that guest devices should be able to access the Internet from anywhere on the hotel grounds, this includes guest rooms of course, the lobby, and the business center. Prior to the recent upgrade, they were experiencing connectivity and speed issues. This was affecting their guests more than anything else.

In order to rectify this situation and optimize their wireless network, HIS came up with a game plan that would make the guests and the hotel happy. We upgraded their existing Ruckus WAPs to 802.11AC, and then performed a Zone Director 1200 upgrade. APs were installed on all the floors in the hallways outside various rooms to provide maximum coverage. A new Fusion A200 was installed to complete the job. We also got Larkspur on a web power switch so that we can reboot their equipment remotely should there be a problem. This provides us with the ability to restart the system ourselves. This means we don’t have to go through the onerous task of trying to find an untrained hotel staff member and walk them through it. The web power switch (www.webpowerswitch.com) is the perfect solution for our maintenance team.

We asked Matt what he considers to be the most important factors in having superlative Wi-Fi available to his guests.

“Everyone wants to stay connected. If service goes down or draws to a halt because of low speed, guests will say something about it. It’s all about functionality and speed. With the upgrade, we’ve had no outages and no dramatic slowdowns. This has contributed to creating a great guest experience. The goal of our hotel is a home away from home atmosphere and a large part of that is matching or exceeding what a guest is used to in their own home. With the internet that can be a real challenge, but HIS knew exactly what equipment was needed and how best to install it. The gentlemen who came to do the work were true professionals. They were quick and efficient and the impact to our guests was minimal.”

According to Matt, the installation was a big success and guest satisfaction surveys have shown a big improvement in Internet expectations and he could not be happier with this upgrade. He appreciated the amount of care and consideration HIS put into the endeavor.

“We have had many long term guests stay with us and fortunately some of them were here before the upgrade and after the upgrade. They were able to give firsthand experience to just how much of an improvement this was. Our survey scores have been up and no one has said anything about the Internet going down. It’s truly a big deal to us and our guests.
“It’s one thing to provide a great product, but it’s a completely different challenge to provide a service that equals such a product. The fact that you want all of this feedback, good or bad, shows me that you care about your customers even after the job is done. That is true customer care.”

There you have it! Another successful installation from Hotel Internet Services where successfully connecting people up is our job!

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 Scoop:

11 factors for successful Wi-Fi implementation

Galen Collins from Hotel News Now has put together a great article regarding Wi-Fi implementation.

Survey after survey has identified Wi-Fi as an important priority among travelers. Hotel Wi-Fi networks, however, are often plagued by various service issues—such as dead zones, sudden disconnects, slow speeds, rejected connection requests and jitter—and are unable to meet the coverage, performance and capacity needs of hotels. The financial implications for poor Wi-Fi service are profound. Growing hotel guest broadband consumption also is making long-range technology and infrastructure planning difficult. Read More>

The State of the Wi-Fi: a Look at Hotel Internet in 2015

The renowned Travel & Leisure Magazine gives its take of hotel Wi-Fi.

After years of pressure from disgruntled guests over Wi-Fi charges, hotels are coming around. In the past year, nearly every major brand that was still charging for Internet access has done away with basic fees—either for all guests (bravo, Hyatt) or for loyalty-program members (Hilton, InterContinental, Marriott, Starwood). Read More>

Hotel Wi-Fi Focus: Access & Security

Tammy Mastroberte, Contributing Editor of Hospitality Technology Magazine has penned an interesting article on hotel Wi-Fi as well.

When it comes to guest satisfaction in the hotel industry, quality, reliable and accessible Internet access is a top priority. Guests are often traveling with multiple Wi-Fi devices (with hotels reporting anywhere from 3 to 5 devices on average), and consumption continues to increase. Hyatt Place recently found in a guest survey that free Wi-Fi was the top amenity searched for when choosing a hotel. Hotels are responding by adding more bandwidth: according to Hospitality Technology’s 2015 Lodging Technology Study, 43% of hotels will boost the bandwidth available to public spaces over the next 18 months, and one-third will upgrade bandwidth inside the guestroom. Read More>

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Captain Video

This month we have some more of those rather strange yet funny hotel videos. Take a moment and sit back and enjoy.

– So you want to be a hotelier?  – Here’s an amusing spoof about the roles and situations in the hotel industry.  YoungHotelier.com seems to have had a good time putting this one together.

Americans in Paris – Ahhh the thought of Paris brings smiles and wondrous memories. In this video Kevin and Janice live their romantic dreams as they enjoy the city until…

Great Story – For a one minute video, the hero in this story somehow manages to go through a lot from terrorists chasing him through the forest (plenty of AK 47s), hiding from them in a high-hide, getting his hiding place sawn through by a Logger, to find himself hugging the sawn log as he falls off a waterfall. I won’t spoil the end. 🙂