The research commissioned by Zyxel has shown that for more than half (55%) of European hotels, Wi-Fi is one of the three most sought after services by guests, but 38% of hotels can not provide high quality access to the wireless network through a large number of connected devices to it.
The survey was attended by 405 IT managers responsible for hotels from nine countries in Western Europe. The full results are presented in the Zyxel’s Connected Hospitality Report: Europe (English).
Wi-Fi was named one of the three most sought after hotel services, while poor Wi-Fi is second only to external noise caused by hotel guests complaints. Nearly every fifth (18%) participant in the survey faces this problem.
“Frequent complaints should be a cause for concern for the entire hotel industry,” Zyxel believes. – “The visitor expects Wi-Fi in the hotel to work steadily, and if not, there are serious inconveniences, especially for entrepreneurs.”
37% of hotel managers said they had no problems with Wi-Fi, and 10% were “not very satisfied” or “not satisfied” at all with the Wi-Fi service their hotel offers guests to. However, more than half (52%) indicated that they had problems when many devices were connected to the wireless network at the same time, with 12% of those polled constantly faced with this problem.
According to GlobalWebIndex, the average number of connected devices for individual users reached 3.64, and according to Emarketer last year, the penetration of smartphones in Western Europe exceeded 70%.
Thus, the problems with Wi-Fi services will be intensified, especially in connection with the transition of enterprises to the use of cloud technologies and the growing popularity of consumers of streaming services online video.
According to Zyxel, almost two thirds of hoteliers faced network problems in their hotels, and more than half of them noted that network performance dropped with increasing number of connected devices. However, most respondents still did not realize the importance of the problem.
“Do not expect that if the hotel is bad Wi-Fi, then guests to use the Internet will use 3G / 4G. In many places, especially in rural areas, there is still no good data transmission service over the cellular network.
In addition, visitors from other countries often can not use cellular communication because of high tariffs for data roaming, so Wi-Fi is the only affordable option for connecting to the Internet. Unfortunately, many hotels not only can not offer decent Wi-Fi to their guests, but even do not try to solve this problem “, – say in Zyxel.
One of the main reasons for the poor quality of wireless networks in hotels is the mistakes in its deployment. Almost half (49%) of the respondents stated that they had not screened the hotel before deploying a wireless network, or they did not know about such a survey.
In addition, in 15% of hotels deployment of wireless networks was performed by an employee who does not have the necessary qualifications.
“For the effective deployment of the Wi-Fi network, you must take into account the specifics of a specific hotel, such as distance from access points, wall thickness, etc.
This task can not be solved without the involvement of a specialist in wireless technology. To expand the Wi-Fi network without a preliminary inspection of the hotel is senseless, as well as arrange a large meal in the restaurant, without first clearing its capacity. In many hotels, the Wi-Fi network works badly due to the fact that its deployment did not take into account the design features of the building and the needs of the hotel guests, “- concludes Zyxel.