Guests expect a seamless experience from check-in, to settling into their room, to the onsite amenities and every touch point until they finish their stay. When it comes to guest Wi-Fi for hotels, visitors will choose one hotel over another based on secure and reliable connectivity (84%, 2025 Hospitality Technology Guest Engagement Study). It’s not just about connecting to the Wi-Fi but all the connected features that can cause more than bad experiences; it creates a financial burden for the property.
Whether it’s the check-in computers or kiosks or back-end housekeeping systems, the network’s reliability keeps the hotel buzzing. Any delay creates a trickle effect of frustrations for guests and associates alike. Loss of productivity, loss of loyalty, and disconnected experiences result in revenue loss.
I worked for nearly 20 years at a major hotel brand and developed GPNS Wi-Fi compliance standards, and reliable connectivity truly impacts the core infrastructure of the hotel and the guest journey. Let’s review some common scenarios that challenge hotel operations and how hoteliers can address aging infrastructure.
Problem: Impacts Associates’ Support of Guest Requests
When guest Wi-Fi for hotels is spotty across the property, the ability to support guest requests by associates is drastically reduced. This includes all types of property systems, such as hotel restaurant hand-held payments, elevator controls, check-in kiosks, and HVAC or critical system outage monitoring.
Imagine coming off of a 12-hour flight and arriving at the hotel to long lines at the desk and slow check-in processes. Instead, guests prefer to get automatically connected to the Wi-Fi, get access to their mobile wallet keys, and walk straight to their room – no delays and zero waits.
Problem: Reduces In-Room Entertainment and Working Experiences
Guests expect to log-in for work meetings or stream their favorite shows from their devices, and if bandwidth isn’t managed adequately, none of these programs will work. This is true for employee productivity – the slower the speeds and updates, the slower the response times.
A guest gets their kiddos to sleep, and then they need to work. But other guests have hogged all of the bandwidth, and the connectivity is crawling. The guest can’t get up and leave; they are just left with a sour experience.
Problem: Decreases Efficiency of Operations
Imagine delays in inputting food orders via tablets or printers that depend on solid Wi-Fi performance. If the Wi-Fi is unreliable or slow, these delays not only cause lines to back up for coffee or breakfast orders, but this quickly causes loss in revenue and dissatisfied customers.
Not to mention delays in maintenance systems or refrigeration monitoring. These types of hiccups result in major food loss, water waste, or massive increases in energy consumption.
Solution: Fixing Poorly Performing Guest Wi-Fi for Hotels
Choose the right partner for design
When it comes to laying the foundation for guest Wi-Fi and infrastructure, the first step is selecting a good managed service provider (MSP) that has a proven track record. The partner can help perform a very thorough Wi-Fi design that satisfies all of the property’s coverage and performance requirements – avoiding spotty service across the property.
In addition, the MSP should provide a centralized cloud-based management and monitor tool that would allow the property to more quickly resolve network issues, creating a more robust and reliable Wi-Fi infrastructure.
Make bandwidth management a priority
It’s important to consider the internet bandwidth coming into the property. It should be sized to satisfy at least 80% of the bandwidth required for guests, events, associates, VPN connections to brand data centers, and any cloud-based property applications. Inadequate WLAN bandwidth may appear to users that the Wi-Fi performance is unsatisfactory.
The ability to enable bandwidth prioritization based on users should be deployed. This could be accomplished via the Nomadix Gateway. For example, a bandwidth prioritization order that might be deployed at a conference hotel would consist of the following – Conference users, Guestroom users, associate users, and then public space users. This ensures priority members get access to higher levels of bandwidth as it is balanced appropriately.
Upgrade for better reliability
Perform network infrastructure upgrades (e.g., access points and switches) based on bandwidth demands. For example, since the highest bandwidth demands are generally in conference and pre-meeting spaces, upgrade that infrastructure first, followed by upgrading guest room and public space infrastructure on an as-needed basis.
To provide adequate Wi-Fi coverage for associate use, make sure that sufficient focus is provided in those areas where associates need reliable and fast coverage to support guest requests. This is also similar for any Wi-Fi enabled devices leveraged on the property, such as payments, self-service kiosks or other IoT devices that run on Wi-Fi.
Save money by creating a reliable backbone with the Wi-Fi network
Nomadix has been enabling secure connectivity and bandwidth management for over 25 years. If you are interested in learning more about Nomadix Gateways and our cloud-based management for guest wi-fi for hotels, please book a meeting.
Richard Wagner is director, certification and compliance, at Nomadix, an ASSA ABLOY company, a provider of patented internet gateways, wired and wireless infrastructure networks, in-room TV casting, Passpoint, in-room voice assistants and cloud-based PBX phone service for hotels.