How to work out how much bandwidth your hotel needs

How to work out how much bandwidth your hotel needs

If you are planning to open a new hotel, or refurbish one, your internet connectivity and how much bandwidth you need is likely to be high on the agenda. Here’s our guide to ensuring you have the bandwidth you need to keep your staff and your hotel guests happy.

You and your team work hard to deliver excellent service to your guests. The happier your guests are, the better your reviews and your bookings grow. Your guests’ ability to connect to the internet is increasingly important as part of your overall service. If they cannot get emails/files or catch up on their social media feeds from wherever in your hotel they may be, they will not be happy. Providing that seamless online experience is impacted by a series of factors…

How many Guests and Devices

Put simply, the more guests you have staying in your hotel, the more bandwidth you will need. They will all have a phone and many will have laptops or tablets. They will expect to have a good service to every device simultaneously.

Don’t forget devices you provide in the rooms and the bandwidth they will need to. More and more hotels are putting Alexa-type devices into guest’s rooms and, of course, there is the television.

5Mbps per room is a minimum figure for your calculation, with 8-10Mbps to ensure the quality experience you want to deliver.

Who is doing what?

Highly dependent on your guest profile, you need to determine what your hotel’s guests will be using the bandwidth for:

• Families are likely to more online gaming, social media and video streaming
• Checking email and accessing work-related files will be more the norm for business people, as well as online meetings using Teams, Zoom or similar

Each usage type will impact how much bandwidth is needed.

When will bandwidth usage peak?

In the same way the electricity companies used to monitor when the adverts came on during Coronation Street (as everyone put the kettle on), you need to consider when bandwidth usage will peak.

Do those travelling on business arrive during the day, or generally early evening? They’ll be checking email etc. just after they check in.

Families returning from the beach or the theme park will similarly go online when they get back in the late afternoon or early evening. If they’ve not uploaded their pics to Facebook or Instagram during the day, they will as soon as they get to their room!

Your internet service provider (ISP) may provide burstable bandwidth (for a cost of course), so knowing when to expect a surge of bandwidth use and for how long will help you work out what you need from your ISP.

Getting signal to your guests

Whilst not strictly part of the bandwidth calculation, how you get the internet connection to your guests will impact their impression of the service.

The signal from each WiFi router is impacted by both distance and the structure of your hotel. Steel beams will interfere with WiFi signals, as will Christmas lights. If you’re refurbishing your hotel, we highly recommend getting a signal scan done so you can identify weak spots and dead zones. Adding additional network points in the right places will resolve that issue.

If your hotel is a series of buildings dispersed across your estate, you are going to need some cabling done. You may rely on WiFi within the guest rooms and the public areas, but the signal will only stretch so far. Your internet signal will travel much further via cables (ideally fibre) between buildings; you can switch to WiFi then, but you may wish to add network points to the rooms as well.

Availability

Based on a 5-10Mbps per room calculation, its clear that most hotels will need a big internet connection, Latest figures suggest gigabit connections are available across 87% of the country but we recommend you check what is actually available to your site and, very importantly, what the lead times are for installation. Most should be available within 4 weeks, but its better to be safe that sorry. Work with your IT support provider to calculate your bandwidth needs and ensure you order it with plenty of time spare before you open your doors for the first time.

Technology plays an increasingly important role in your hotel, often central to the smooth functioning of your team and the experience your guests have.  Whilst it is often hidden behind the décor and not considered in the same way as the food or the customer service, it is vital. If your technology isn’t helping you deliver the guest experience you want to deliver, get in touch and let’s talk about how things can be improved.