ТОПИК - Wireless Internet: Demands of a more mobile workforce

ТОПИК

Wireless Internet: Demands of a more mobile workforce

Wireless Internet: Demands of a more mobile workforce

As the revolution in wireless technology gains momentum, hotels are the biggest growth are for wi-fi (wireless networking) hotspots. These days, the business traveler can get online anywhere from meeting and conference spaces to restaurants and bars. A resent report from Visiongain, the UK-based media company, predicted that wi-fi development in hotels was set to grow by more then ten times over the coming years. The company believes that in three years , about 90 percent of all corporate users’ laptops will include wi-fi capability. It reckons that the hotel industry will experience the most widespread adoption of the commercial wi-fi hotspots used by laptops and PDA owners.

With such a fast take up of the new technology it is hardly surprising that hotels are keen to cash in. Opportunities to do so can be derived both from revenue-sharing agreements with telecoms suppliers, as well as from driving more traffic into, say and introductive coffee area, by the introduction of wi-fi hotspots. However, perhaps as important a motivation for hotel chains is the need to remain competitive, as their corporate customers – ever more accustomed to working while on the move – are demanding constant and easy access to high-speed Internet connections. Chains have been quick to respond.

Marriott has installed wireless connection in more than 900 of its properties – primarily in meeting and public spaces – at leading business travel destinations such as New York, Washington, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Singapore and Hong Kong. ‘We see the priority for wireless lying in places where mobility is a premium for travelers – in the lobby or in a meeting environment – where they want to move to a break out room and don’t want to have to reconnect,’ says Lou Paladeau , Marriott’s vice-president of technology business development.

And high-speed connections certainly can boost a property’s business. Since installing Cisco’s high-speed Internet access for its guests, for example, the 500-room Palace Hotel in Japan has increased its revenue by $27,000 per month. ‘If a guest tries our Internet service for a day, he or she never stops using it until the departure day,’ says Kyohei Hirose, director of rooms at the Palace Hotel. ‘Once our foreign guests experience this service, it becomes the reason for them to come back to the Palace Hotel again.