Unmanaged WiFi is not an option for the hospitality industry.

Slice is designed to deliver hotel-wide wireless networks with the purpose of improving guest satisfaction; simultaneously increasing revenue for the hotel while decreasing the cost of implementation.

The hospitality industry is based around guest satisfaction. The success of a hotel will be defined by its guests' desire to return and recommend the property to other people. While there are many elements that influence a guest’s satisfaction, WiFi and reliable internet have catapulted themselves as a priority for many guests' requirements. Hotel operators are under intense pressure to provide free and reliable internet to their guests. However, creating the balance between free and reliable often leads to unsatisfactory results. 

Here are some common issues you see with hotel WiFi:

• Free WiFi is available everywhere but it’s very hard to connect and stay connected
  • Purchasing proper access points and bandwidth can be pricey. Access points designed for high density deployments cost an arm and a leg, the same goes for bandwidth. Even smaller hotels (less than 200 rooms) usually need download speeds of 100mbps.
• Free WiFi is available but only in public areas and not in-room
  • Proper bandwidth and access points are required to deliver WiFi. One way hotels save money is by creating free WiFi hot spots in public areas like lobbies and cafeterias. This might have been acceptable 10 years ago, but today’s internet user requires constant connection and in-room dead zones will not meet guest satisfaction requirements.
• Free and paid WiFi are both available but neither work properly
  • Some hotels offer free and paid WiFi to make up for costs required in deploying and maintaining the infrastructure. Delivery of this usually consists of deploying multiple access points to broadcast multiple networks (this is asking for an interference nightmare). These hotels are usually just trying to take advantage of a certain type of business guest who will pay any fee to maintain a constant connection.
• Only paid WiFi is available but the cost does not justify the level of service, or lack thereof.
  • The biggest pet peeve for hotel guests, nothing will warrant a negative guest review faster than a paid network that doesn’t even work.

Being able to generate revenue over WiFi, both directly and indirectly, is imperative to healthy operations and delivering an outstanding value to guests.  Slice allows hoteliers to deliver dynamic and consistent WiFi & internet to their entire end user population.  Slice does not require a hotel to deliver an exclusively paid or free network; instead the hotel can utilize a Freemium approach and only charge for premium access on an as needed basis. A small tweak like this can go a long distance as far as improving guest satisfaction.

Some other capabilities Slice Hotel WiFi System can offer:

• Captive portals with custom branding
• Integration with PMS for seamless end user billing
• Private VLAN capabilities
• Freemium offerings based on location, time, price or relationship with the hotel
• Ability to work with any radio providers
• Proactive security to ensure wrong-doing is not committed by users on the hotel network
• Offer captive portal capabilities to companies renting an event space within the hotel
• Collect direct and indirect revenue through affiliate and local advertising

Guest satisfaction is key in the hospitality industry. Check out our blog for helpful tips: 5 Ways To Improve Hotel Guest Satisfaction With Slice