Wifi has revolutionised our lives, making it possible to work anywhere in the world – where will it take us next? Tom Otley asked connectivity providers and users for their predictions for 2008.
Business travel has changed out of all recognition in recent years, and if there is one force behind most of that change, it is technology. Whether we book our travel online, or simply rely on the internet to research a destination, fares or hotel choices, we have certainly been empowered by the access to information it allows us. But of course another aspect of this technological innovation is connectivity, particularly in terms of wifi.
To find out where we are in terms of technology and the business traveller, and also to see what we can look forward to in coming years, we held a Business Traveller breakfast discussion panel. We invited along some of those who are involved in providing technology to business travellers and guessing what our requirements will be in several years’ time. We also invited several Business Traveller readers along to voice their opinions (anonymous here) about the technological offerings they had encountered worldwide during their recent travels.
The focus, initially, was on how far we have come in such a short time. Look back to the letters pages of Business Traveller magazine ten years ago, and they were full of complaints about the cost of making phone calls from hotel rooms. Then mobile phones came along, and the issue vanished (though the mobile phone operators rightly attract plenty of criticism for their roaming charges abroad).
From being connected by phone, we then expected to have some form of connection for our emails, at first wired in the business centre, then using the phone line in the room, and now by wifi. This change has been driven by the capabilities of the hardware many of us are carrying.
Chris Bruce, chief executive officer of BT Openzone, said: “BT Openzone has been around for five years. When we first started out, wireless was not embedded in laptops. In the early days you had to buy a card and stick it in your laptop, while now it’s almost impossible to buy a laptop without wireless.”
Of course, having the ability to connect to the internet and having the knowledge are two different things. Stuart Leven of Guoman Hotels pointed out that, while hotel staff will do everything they can to help, where technical assistance is required it’s better to go to the experts.
“One of the most attractive aspects of teaming up with BT Openzone across all of our hotels was we knew we would have a consistent level of customer support offered to guests,” he said.
It hasn’t always been this way. In common with many hotel chains, early adoption of wifi meant that a number of different wifi products were being offered because individual hotels had signed up with competing providers.
Leven said: “Brand consistency is how you encourage people to come back to you. People feel a sense of comfort when they see the BT logo, they see it’s an institution, they trust it, they know it is safe.”
Of course there are different levels of familiarity with technology, from business travellers who are the “early adopters” , always the first with a new gadget and pushing for their IT department to help them synchronise the latest personal digital assistant or smartphone with the company server, to those who struggle to find the wifi switch on their laptop.
“We do have all those varieties of customers,” agreed Leven. “For them we have our fixed terminals in the lobby or the business centre, and also the helpline and helpdesk that BT Openzone runs, so they can deal with those inquiries and make sure the customer gets online.”
So if wifi is becoming essential for business travellers, should it be offered for free? Certainly from the point of view of the business travellers it should be. “Why should I pay £15 on top of a £250 room charge?” was one comment. Leven answered that sometimes wifi is included as part of a package, particularly for organisers of events at the hotel,
but most often, for individual business travellers, it is not. “The bandwidth, the security, the reliability, all come with a cost attached. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask guests to pay for that reliability and that service,” he said.
The other point made was that free wifi access can be a little hard to take advantage of when 150 delegates leave a conference and log on at once, causing “significant problems of bandwidth and speed”, as Chris Bruce put it. If it takes ten minutes to download your emails, what use is it being free? That said, if it is paid-for access, the hotel in question needs to make sure it can deal with that surge in demand.
Chris Bruce described the issue of bandwidth as evolving very quickly. BT Openzone is able to chart, for instance, whether people are using their wifi connectivity to use voice over internet protocol (VOIP) phones, for instance. And of course in cities such as London, with BT’s mesh coverage of Westminster, there is total connectivity in public areas, allowing business travellers to connect to the internet as they roam around outside, although at present there are few devices to allow this to be done with any regularity, unless you like sitting with your laptop in a park.
This will change, though. We are all used to having total coverage with mobile phones, often conducting conversations as we walk down the street, board a bus or train, or walk through an airport. And once stand-alone VOIP phones become more common, we will be able to take advantage of the coverage to make calls for a fraction of the cost.
So much for connectivity. What else can we expect from the hotel room of the future? The technology in rooms is being designed to ensure it can facilitate both our business and leisure needs. One theory here is that of “place shifting”, which is when technology in the room allows you to relax and become the person you are at home – listening to the music you want instead of one of the radio channels in the room, for instance.
It is also possible to watch your own television channels courtesy of devices such as the Slingbox, which allow users to watch their home television channels using the internet and their laptop screen, even changing channels remotely from the other side of the world. Sheer witchcraft, although of limited use if someone is at home and keeps turning it back to a programme about property or a soap opera. We can also speak to and see friends and family using video-conferencing via VOIP technology.
Flatscreen televisions are becoming more common in hotel rooms, and as well as taking up less precious space than the old box televisions, they also present opportunities for hoteliers. “Our new rooms have plasma TVs which have the ability to connect to laptops, allowing people to play their Powerpoint presentations through them, or even download films over the internet on to their laptops, and then watch them on this screen,” said Leven. “You can plug your mp3 player in, charge it, and play your music through the speakers.”
These rooms are currently being rolled out across all 39 of Thistle and Guoman hotels, but the challenge, of course, is that no one can accurately predict the future.
If hotels have to be built in such a way that they can satisfy the needs of travellers for some years to come, how long does a hotel room last?
“You get what you pay for when refurbishing a room,” said Leven. “Technology is something you need to constantly refresh, so the content of new bedrooms needs to be flexible. If five years ago you said you could record your favourite stuff from the TV and watch it whenever you want at a later date, I wouldn’t have believed you. But if you want to be seen as a progressive brand – which I believe we are – you have got to keep up with these changes.”
So are business travellers expecting wifi access? According to Guoman Hotels, they are now putting it into their requirements when contracting with hotels. Leven said: “When it comes to the decision of whether a corporate contracts with one hotel chain or another, it will come down to not only do you provide wifi, but how do you provide it?
“It’s not enough that we have this space in the corner of the lobby where there’s connectivity. That’s why we’ve made sure that it is available in every meeting room, every bedroom, all the public spaces and in fact even in the back-of-house of the hotels for the employees. We are interrogated by corporates and by business travellers on the level of
service we provide, and that’s only right.”
So are we all really so obsessed with connectivity and technology? John Williams of the GTMC added a note of caution: “There are two types of business traveller: the one who just wants to get back to the hotel room and sleep, and the other who is on a trip and has nothing to do in the evening. You might find they are sitting there with nothing else to do and actually learn how to use some of these new services.”
So much for the UK, but what can business travellers expect when they get abroad? Chris Bruce said: “The whole international aspect of this is one of the biggest challenges for a wifi operator. International roaming is something we are working very hard on, where customers have one charge, one password that they can use the whole time they are abroad, and a voucher that allows, say, 500 minutes. We currently have one of those for Europe, and one for the Americas. These roaming agreements allow customers to use other networks abroad such as T-Mobile.”
Then, of course, there’s the possibility of connectivity not only in airport lounges, but in the sky. Phones, email, perhaps full internet capability such as was once offered by the Connexion by Boeing service may soon return. And this time, with a travelling public more accustomed to being constantly online, it might stick. Now there’s a subject for the next Business Traveller breakfast…
For more information visit guoman.com, btopenzone.com.
