Broadband as Amenity
Marriott offers broadband Internet access to its guests in more than 1,700 of its hotels, including its Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Renaissance Hotels & Resorts, Courtyard, Residence Inn, TownePlace Suites, Fairfield Inn, and SpringHill Suites. More than 1,200 of those installations provide wireless access to that high-speed connection.

“Customers are telling us that they are selecting hotels based on the availability of high-speed Internet access,” said Marriott Hotels spokesman Scott Carman. Marriott has no plans to increase its room rates to turn a quick profit on the service, however. Instead, the company is betting that its free high-speed Internet service will prove so popular with business travelers that the revenue it gains from additional reservations will more than cover the cost of deployment.

Meanwhile, InterContinental Hotels Group recently announced that it will offer free high-speed Internet access as a standard feature in 2,500 of its InterContinental Hotels and Resorts, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, and Holiday Inn Express hotels in North America. Jim Bailey, InterContinental’s director of hotel technology and services, sees a place for both complementary wired and wireless access. “We generally provide wired Ethernet service in our guest rooms and meeting rooms. We allow for Wi-Fi in common areas such as lobbies for hotspot zones.”

Better Be Easy
In order to keep their broadband services from becoming more of a problem than a solution to business travelers, hotel chains are keenly focused on ease of use. Carman said, “The broadband access is designed to be plug and play, with little to no setup. Essentially, you plug in an Ethernet connection and open an Internet browser and you’re ready to go.”

Bailey agreed that ease of use is vital for high-speed services to be successful in hotels. “The guest should not have to do any kind of reconfiguration of their PC. We require hotels to have printed collateral with instructions,” he said. “On the printed collateral guests are given a toll-free number to call the 24/7 help desk, and in some cases, based on the size of the property, there is a hotel engineer or staff member that can provide assistance.”

InterContinental is no stranger to providing these services. Its Staybridge Suites hotel chain has offered high-speed Internet access in every guest room, meeting room, and public area since its inception 6 years ago, putting it well ahead of the broadband curve in the hotel industry.

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