After the pandemic, it changes people's lifestyle, and the lifestyle will definitely change the way Hotelier provides services to the hotel guests to make them feel more like home. There are several key consumption trends that Hotelier needs to pay attention:
99% of all U.S. households pay for at least one or more streaming services (Forbes 2024)
personalized entertainment experiences are quickly becoming not just a nice-to-have but the expectation of hotel guests.
Music streaming services make up 89% of total music industry revenue, growing over 10 times from 7.9M subscribers in 2014 to 90M in 2024. (Forbes 2024)
An easy-connected speaker system will be favorite
22% of American workers will work remote by 2025 (Forbes 2024)
Allowing VPN connectivity is also important for business guests
Solid video conference quality
Besides the emerging services the Hoteliers need to consider, there are several services to provide:
Solid WiFi and high-speed Internet access
VOD for Paid Media
IP Phone System
Solid WiFi with High-Speed Internet Access
How much the Internet speed required for each room?
Take Netflix streaming for example that 3Mbps is required for SD and 5Mbps for HD, so if the guests in the room doing browsing and watching 1 HD streaming, then 25Mbps is highly recommended, and 100Mbps is recommended if multiple streaming in a room.
WiFi Coverage and Channel Conflict
To provide a solid WiFi infrastructure, there are several design considerations:
Had better <-65dbm RSSI coverage for VoIP application, so usually each room will have one Access Point, such as EnGenius ECW215 wall-mount AP, to have better coverage
When the AP density is high, channel conflict will cause the lower data rate
EnGenius build-in "Auto Channel" algorithm can automatically assign least-interfered channel to the AP
Guest WiFi Access Control
To simplify the WiFi setting, Captive Portal with credential is commonly used for "Guest WiFi", so when the guests check-in, he can get the credential immediately to access the Guest WiFi across all areas of the Hotel.
If SSID passcode is used, then myPSK function can allow the guests to have an unique passcode valid throughout the period of their stay.
Guests Privacy
All guest device traffic should only go directly to the Internet and should not be accessed nor be scanned by other guest client devices.
"L2 Isolation" should be enabled for Guest SSID, so the WiFi clients can only surf Internet without capability to "see" other devices.
"Casting" Service Becomes a Must-Have Advantage
Although some hotelier provides streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, however hotel guests might worry about credential security and reluctant to use the service. Instead, they prefer to be able to control the TV to using their own devices and casting the content of their choice.
40% of guests would book a hotel that provides casting over one that does not
57% of hoteliers surveyed said casting is more important to their guests than cable TV service in the guest room
72% of guests said they were interested in accessing their personal streaming accounts through their guest room TV
(source: Hotel Internet Services 2022)
Casting Technology Concern and Solution
Due to the "guest privacy" concern that "L2 Isolation" is enabled such that the guest client device cannot find any other devices including the casting devices, so it causes the connectivity issue to send streaming to the specific casting devices.
EnGenius unique “SmartCasting” feature allows the hotelier to specify the casting devices in each room and provide unique QR codes for the room guests to cast their content from their devices even when L2 isolation is on.
Switch Configuration for each room
For VOD, IP Phone system and other IoT control system that, they might need to have separated VLAN's from the Internet access, so multiple VLAN's should be configured for different ports of the switch in each room, which is a tedious work to do and hard to manage.
Consider to "fix" the switch port connection in each room, say, port 1 connects to IP phone, port 2 connects to AP and Port 3 to TV with different VLAN.
Use “Switch Template” to automatically set up the switch configuration of the same model, so the configuration of the switch model will be applied to all switches in the Network. Any change can immediately apply to all switches to save work and time.
Recommend to use EnGenius Extender to save cabling cost.
Extender is a PoE-powered Switch which can be connected to a PoE switch with one single UTP cable and powered by the switch. Extender then can provide PoE to connected AP or other PoE IoT devices.
Hotel Chain Management
The Hotel Chain Group should be able to manage all inventory of every hotel and have different privilege for the central support team to be able to monitor the concurrent client number and bandwidth usage trend anytime.
"MSP Portal" is designed for multi-organization management to have
Central inventory and license management
Team privilege instead of access right assigned to individual, so when the support team member changes, simply change the email account in the "team", then the privilege are all set
Clone Organization and Network configuration to new hotel organization and networks.
Demands and Features Quick Links
Vertical Application Wizard (Hospitality) | Leads to Key Features (PRO) |
Create “Hotel Network” with unique PSK for each room or Captive Portal | MyPSK (Room / myPSK / Period) Captive portal with custom authentication server |
Switch in each room | |
BYOE (Bring your own Entertainment) | |
Big deployment >500 Networks |