Hospitality is one of the industries in which a good mobile signal is most crucial to business success. Being able to make an unbroken voice or Skype call home is one of the most important ways in which customers rate their experience in a hotel or restaurant. If they have to go outside to get a signal, that can cancel out all the investments in luxury furnishings and attentive staff.
Today, one-third of leisure travellers say they will not return to a hotel with inadequate wireless access, and this figure rises to 67% for business travellers. While nearly everyone in the hospitality sector recognizes these facts, very few know what to do about it.
In a global survey of over 500 enterprises conducted by Nemertes Research, respondents were asked to rate the importance of good indoor mobile coverage to their business. In the hospitality sector, 44% rated it between 8 and 10. Half of the hospitality organizations said they were very interested in small cells as a solution, but only 25% said they had enough knowledge and information to make an informed decision about deploying them.
This is the situation Small Cell Forum is determined to address with its new Enterprise Taskforce and Enterprise Advisory Council. These initiatives work with prominent players in key vertical markets to understand their commercial needs for better mobile connectivity, and to come up with practical solutions. Hospitality is the first vertical market to be targeted because of its business-critical need to address mobile quality issues.
The Forum is keen to work with as many hospitality organizations worldwide as possible, to get the broadest and deepest understanding of what they require. If you operate in this sector, you will gain real benefits from taking part in the program – the chance to learn more about how to purchase and deploy a solution which could have a profound impact on customer satisfaction; and the opportunity to influence the Forum’s work to ensure your needs are fully understood and addressed.
The Enterprise Taskforce has already produced a valuable set of documents to help hospitality organizations to make informed decisions about small cells. They include clear, jargon-free guides to the business advantages of small cells and a guide to deployment processes to make adoption smooth.
Together, the documents offer a blueprint for small cell deployment, precisely tailored to the specific needs and interests of hospitality companies. They will answer your questions and address some of the myths about small cells.
While the Forum acknowledges that deployment of in-building wireless has complexities and challenges, these may be far less than some organizations perceive. The Forum, and the industry, have worked to lower barriers and simplify deployment processes for many years now. As the Enterprise Taskforce documents reveal, significant progress has been made towards making small cells simple and cost-effective to roll out and manage, and a clear contributor to the business case.
We also recognize that wireless quality of service is a moving target as customers’ usage increases and changes. So there will be more valuable material to build on these initial offerings and ensure the changing needs of the hospitality sector are addressed. As well as carefully targeted, vertical-specific documents and tools, there will be discussion groups and events at relevant conferences, plus ways for developers and integrators in this industry to get involved too.
The result will be a blueprint for deploying high quality indoor mobile networks which will have a measurable impact on your business and customers from day one. Don’t miss the opportunity to help shape that valuable outcome – get involved today.