Why Reliable Hotel WiFi Is Essential

We’ve all been there – having settled down in a hotel ready to send off some important emails, only to be let down by slow, erratic or even non-existent hotel WiFi. Thanks to the increasing ubiquity of WiFi services within the hospitality industry, and our ever more connected lives, offering high-functioning hotel WiFi to customers is now an absolute must.

Hotel WiFi is used by guests for a whole range of reasons including connecting with friends, catching up with their favourite television programmes or, particularly for those on business trips, sending off vital pieces of work or information. In other words, poor hotel WiFi can be disruptive to your guests and will reflect badly on your business. Technologically savvy hoteliers will know that establishing a strong hotel wireless network from a qualified service provider that features decent managed service will ensure guests are able to connect swiftly and easily.

The following are a few more reasons to convince you that investing in strong and reliable WiFi may prove to be one of your best business decisions yet:

Dodgy hotel WiFi can cost the business precious time

Having WiFi that cuts out regularly or is difficult to set up will be disruptive to hoteliers, as guests will constantly be asking for technological help. Dealing with these questions may cost the business precious time that could be channelled into something more productive.

Be wary of Trip Advisor

Users of online review sites are more likely to hone in on the negative aspects of a business than the positive ones, and poor hotel WiFi may be one of the first things guests notice. Foreclose the possibility of bad reviews by getting your WiFi up to scratch from the outset.

Satisfied customers will be regularly customers

Poor hotel WiFi may be enough to put clients off returning, even if everything else about their stay was top notch.

WiFi is necessary for events

If your hotel is one that hosts business conferences or other WiFi-reliant events, establishing a strong and efficient network is absolutely necessary. In fact, once you established strong WiFi within your building, you can use it as a selling point when advertising your services to potential clients.

Having set out the main reasons why hotel WiFi is essential to the successful running of the business, it is also important to stress the need for a secure network. Without a secure connection, guests and visitors could find themselves accessing questionable material online or becoming victim to malware or cyber hacking. To make sure your connection is secure:

Separate your internal network from the guest network

Use a firewall or establish a separate VLAN to keep the networks secure and separate.

Update your firmware

This should be done every few months or so to protect you and your guests from the latest malware.

Make sure wireless signals are encrypted

Encrypt your network with WPA2 encryption to prevent hackers from spying on your guests. If you change the name of your SSID from the outset to reflect the name of your business and make sure a secure password is set up, this should not make logging on any more difficult for guests.

Block content to compromising material

While guests may want to use your hotel WiFi for material that is ethically or legally questionable, it is your right to prevent them from doing so. Make sure you include stringent content blocks before opening the network up to your guests.

To find out more about setting up a secure WiFi network in your hotel, get in touch with Redway Networks today.

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