Hotel Management Network interviews with Jim Stewart, Sales and Marketing Director from RIEO Communications.

With the increasing popularity of on demand television services and movie downloads, how can hotels ensure guests receive the speed of service they are paying for?

Hotels need to ensure that the company that they are using is able to guarentee specific downloads speeds to meet their customer requirements. The chosen solution should have the ability to allocate a specific bandwidth to a user to enable them to efficeintly and cost effectively download the movie. Hotels should clearly communicate what type of service offering they are providing so that the guest is clear about what is being offered and the cost involved.

Is it possible for hotels to offer different speeds at different prices and how popular might such a move be with hotels and guests?

With the increase of bandwidth hungry applications the hotels should be able to offer low bandwidth demand customers a different broadband speed to that of a higher demand bandwidth user using the likes iPlayer, iTunes, Slingbox etc, and be able to charge accordingly for this service. Hotels may choose to absorb the cotst of email and surfing on low bandwidth applications like MSN but charge a premium for the higher bandwidth hungry applications metioned above.

How would it work from a technological standpoint?

The solution will be able to identify the request from the user to choose the low/high bandwidth line and route the traffic accordingly.
 
The guest should be given simple to use choices for the service they require: this can be communicated by the guest user interface (GUI) either on the TV screen or laptop.

Which measures should hotels take to stop their own back office systems being used by guests?

Hotels should insist on a different broadband provision from their ISP for their guest services network, thus keeping the networks seperate. Those who do choose to utilise the same broadband provision can easily firewall or VLAN the networks preventing unauthorised access to the hotel's back office applications. In providing robust, reliable and secure guest network, the need to provide access to any other network is therefore not required. NOTES: VLAN (Virtual LAN) is another way to seperate networks. 

Many guests see WiFi Internet access as an absolute must and hotels are also required to provide the service for conference and meeting rooms. While guest access can be managed by using room numbers and surnames to log in how can hotels provide WiFi access to large numbers of conference delegates and in public without both compromising their own and their users' security?

Installing a RIEO HSIA solution allows the hotel to set up the necessary security/access controls to prevent any access from unauthorised users. Security access codes are simple and can be easily monitored, and there are endless security measures built into the RIEO network to provide a resilient barrier to security breaches. Guests can also proactively protect themselves from potential threats by having appropriate security settings, VPN and firewall measures selected and saved on their laptop.

As hotels begin to act like Internet service providers, how do laws surrounding the logging of all traffic affect them?

Hotels using reliable ISPs will be advised on what measures they will be required to take should logging traffic become law. THe ISPs are already fully conversant with all the legislation required for them to operate and will be more than ready to share any change in the law with their customers.

Could hotels be held responsible for objectionable material viewed by guests using their connection?

Presenting a disclaimer prior to any authentication or connection to the web via the hotel's high speed internet service will ensure that the user retains responsibility.

How can a hotel protect itself from such a scenario?

See above

If hotels must log all guest traffic, what implications will this have in terms of server space for storage of data?

If hotels are requested to log guest traffic the disk storage will need to be addressed. The size of the storage required will be dependent on how much historical traffic is to be held by law.

If questions were raised about the websites viewed on a hotel server, how would the hotel track the activity to a particular guest?

Tracking features within the HSIA product, the property management system (PMS) and communication between the ISPs will identify the activity of a particular guest.

What implications does this raise concerning guest privacy and the storage of personal data?

I presume this will depend on the legislation!

Do you have any other concerns about hotels acting as ISPs? Please explain.

A hotel's business is based on its service offering and for looking after its guests: many hoteliers will not be fully aware of the fact that they could hypothetically be considered as an ISP and therefore will need to take advice on how to deal with this. Forging close relationships with their HSIA and ISP providers will address any concerns.

back to other articles