In a world where the profit margins hotels enjoy have been slashed dramatically, thanks largely to online comparison websites, the battle to find the balance between quality and cost has never been tougher.
For many hotels, that’s meant scaling back their offering or holding back on investment which otherwise might have gone in to the business. For customers, that’s resulted in a diminished experience – albeit one that better fits into this comparison based market.
But what about hotel WiFi? In an age of 4G mobile internet and smartphones which can easily act as a router, is hotel WiFi worth the investment at all? We believe the answer is categorically yes, let us explain why.
Business customers demand it
A large part of any hotel’s client base is, invariably, business customers. Typically in town for a short while, business customers are a reliable and consistent form of business. That is, if you’re catering to their needs.
The business customer expects more than courtesy and comfort, they expect to be able to transform their room into a dedicated office space, complete with high-speed WiFi. Whether it’s a Skype conference call or simply some crucial research before a client meeting, your business customers need fast, reliable and secure WiFi at all times.
Travellers expect it
For non-business customers, too, WiFi has become a crucial part of their everyday lives. Our mobile devices have become windows to the world through which we record, remember, share and discover.
Forcing customers to rely on their mobile internet whilst they’re in your hotel is counter to the entire ethos of the most successful hotels around the world – make the customer feel at home. The hotel experience is, ultimately, about freeing customers from the worries and anxiety, so why make them worry about data caps? A 2012 study found that the vast majority (86%) of travellers expected free WiFi in their hotel experience – a number which will surely have only grown since then.
It can harm revenues
Having no free WiFi or – worse still – slow and unreliable free WiFi for customers can be a serious drag on your revenues. How so?
- Complaints: More and more, customers turn towards the Internet to voice their frustrations over businesses. With poor or non-existent WiFi, you’re merely attracting complaints and poor reviews, both of which can dramatically affect your revenue and customer intake.
- Loss of corporate contracts: Events and conferences are absolutely crucial to the success of a hotel, and failure to provide a safe, secure and speedy wireless connection for businesses can lead to them simply heading out of the door.
There are countless other small ways in which a no or poorly implemented WiFi can affect your businesses revenue, making the ongoing costs of high quality, high speed WiFi all the more reasonable.
Free WiFi can be an incredible tool
As we’ve seen, not having WiFi affects your business in a huge number of ways, but a properly implemented free WiFi solution does much more than simply meet the expectations of your customers.
Instead, it can be a tremendous boon for your business. Our Airangel WiFi marketing solutions allow you to inject exclusive offers into your customers browsing experience, reward their loyalty with special treats, gather customer feedback directly and much, much more.
For corporate clients, your hotel can utilise Genisys conference management tools to create dedicated logins with dedicated bandwidth, ensuring a fast and secure connection for everybody.
Put simply, your hotel shouldn’t look at WiFi as a burden on the balance sheet, but instead a net positive that can turn passive customers into regular friends of the business. It’s an incredible asset that hundreds of thousands of hotels are putting to use right now, so why aren’t you?
