Hospitality WiFi is a very important and interesting segment. It’s important, of course, because hotels, motels and other places of rest for weary travelers are big businesses with millions and millions of guests annually.
It is interesting because of the wide variety of tasks that WiFi is used for in hotels, and that all these uses are concentrated in a small area: standard WiFi capable of email and other services; streaming; high speed connectivity and sophisticated and secure uses capable of supporting corporate meetings and events. And, of course, there are internal uses for the lodge itself.
Hotel Internet Services last month released research looking at how guests use hospitality WiFi. The results, posted in a story at hospitality.net, are interesting. There are many more devices used in lodges (75 percent of respodents had smartphones, 68 percent laptops and 62 percent tablets), streaming is popular and WiFi is ubiquitous around the hotels.
Perhaps most importantly, hoteliers need to upgrade – and are. From the story:
It is significant to know that more than 50% of the Wi-Fi networks of the hoteliers surveyed are over 2 years old. These networks are just not sufficient for the number of devices that guests are using. 45% said they intended to upgrade their WIFI network with approximately 40% planning to do it within the next two years. The balance are not planning to do anything for 3+ years.
Hospitality WiFi is a fascinating and important market. A big part of the reason simply is that almost every type of WiFi and WiFi use case in the market is concentrated in a small area at a hotel. Luckily, there is gear – such as Meraki wireless access points– available for these venues.
