Hotels are Looking For a Competitive Edge.
The hospitality industry is a very competitive market. The industry is constantly working to improve their offerings to increase their occupancy and, additionally, increase the revenue per available room (REVPAR), especially when there is a potential higher margin item.
The hotel industry is broken into 4 or 5 layers, from the $500/night properties to the $35/night properties. Clearly each have unique markets, and each market has various levels of targeted amenities, which then in turn have the associated mix of either presenting discriminators to attract more guests or increasing REVPAR.
The Market is Moving to an Integrated High Tech Solution.
Current drivers are Video-On-Demand (VOD), specifically television programming and Pay-per-View movies and events; others include VOIP to the room, teleconferencing, and the ever increasing demand for network bandwidth in two dimensions, a) more bandwidth per guest; and, b) more guests with computers.
Points of Interest:
- Real world experience shows that 3 years ago approximately 1 of
10 guests were utilizing the internet, now it is 5 of 10 frequently use
the internet.
- Three years ago guests were simply using the internet to download
email and browse the internet, now the demand is shifting to VPN
tunneling, individual VOIP applications, and Instant Messaging to
include video streaming.
- Video-On-Demand (VOD) is an available technology, still in it’s
earlier stages because of business reasons more than technology -
However, the infrastructure to support VOD is only available in less
than 1% of the hospitality industry.
- Streaming HDTV with MPEG-4 compression requires 17 mbps!
IntraLAN has Solutions to Fit a Wide Range of Hotel Segments:
IntraLAN SmartRoom Network systems will install in minutes and integrate quickly with the existing infrastructure found in 99.9% of today’s hotel market. IntraLAN SmartRoom Network solution:
- High end properties are competing for bigger numbers, therefore are more likely early adaptors of technologies that increase their advantage, such as “easy check-in” but they also are very interested in selling high end products to their guests that are true discriminators.
- Medium properties are quick to move into the “free amenities” to attract higher occupancy, especially focused on business clientele. Some chains are mandating “Free High Speed Wireless” - an example of driving services prematurely into the “free amenity” space to gain occupancy.
- Lower properties compete primarily on the room price and are less likely to want “free amenities,” however; they are very interested in services and technology that will allow them to sell more products to the guest.
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