COMMENT: Underlining the importance of Wi-Fi in hotels

The rise in popularity of connected devices with consumers has been unstoppable in recent years; providing businesses in the hospitality industry with an additional way to target consumers. Of course, the endemic popularity of smartphones, tablets and laptops mean that, if a hotel isn’t providing the supporting services that consumers demand, they’ll find themselves falling far behind all the competitors which are. Wi-Fi as a customer experience cornerstone One of the most obvious facilities that hotels need to provide, to best complement the connected devices utilised by clients, is a hotel wide Wi-Fi network. For now, providing such a service, especially at no extra cost to customers, is a great way to encourage savvy clientele to choose your accommodation over others. However, very soon, not providing such a service will be enough to completely right off your offering in favour of the competition that do offer easy to access Wi-Fi. Statistics bear this reasoning out, a survey conducted in April 2014 found that the number one most important in-room amenity for the global consumers questioned was Free Wi-Fi. Meanwhile, other studies have found that a third of travellers would choose another hotel if they found that their first choice didn’t offer free Wi-Fi. Macdonald hotels was a brand that recently recognised the importance of offering an effective and free Wi-Fi service across its facilities; and a case study which analysed the results of such an installation proves in stark figures just how necessary such an installation is. One amenity really does make all the difference Macdonald hotels decided back in 2013 that providing free Wi-Fi for customers was a great way to expand their business offering, and contacted leading Wi-Fi provider The Cloud to facilitate the change. By October that year, free Wi-Fi had been rolled out across Macdonald hotel’s over 40 venues; with the service being made available across all public areas, from restaurants and bars, to bedrooms. While a positive response was expected, the extent of it caught those involved by surprise. As of the publication of the results from the initial case study, roughly a year after the completion of the Wi-Fi installation, there had been 3,629,710 Wi-Fi sessions on their networks, covering a total of 487,831,444 minutes spent online. That’s an astounding uptake, and serves to provide others in the hotel business, whether larger operations or smaller, that such a facility is more than just an optional luxury, but an essential part of a guest’s experience. Indeed, the necessity of such a feature is borne out by the average duration of each Wi-Fi session, which comes in as over 2 hours; access wasn’t a passing fancy, but a feature that guests really took their time enjoying. Furthermore, use was still increasing; a five-month stretch towards the end of the case study saw an increase of 37% more devices accessing the network. One other notable conclusion that Macdonald hotels drew from the rollout of a free Wi-Fi service, was that it provided them with additional marketing and upsell opportunities. In particular, a customised home page, seen by all who logged into the network, allowed special offers and additional facilities to be advertised, an unobtrusive but highly effective tactic. Author Bio Nick Bush has been writing since he could hold a pen, and has been working in marketing since graduating from the University of Portsmouth. He has a wide range of marketing experience, across a diverse array of fields, and is currently working on behalf of the Cloud. The full details of the organisation’s work with Macdonald Hotels can be viewed here.