Charlotte Mathews
29 March 2005
Johannesburg — MAJOR hotel groups are installing high-speed internet access points in rooms and public areas to deal with growing demand from business travellers for connectivity comparable to what is offered by European and US hotels.
Pyramid Research projects that in the US 25000 hotels will offer wi-fi (a combination of high speed internet access with cellphone technology) by 2007. Only 1000 hotels in the US offered the facility in 2002.
Until recently, business travellers in SA have struggled with slow, erratic and expensive internet access at hotels - a major weakness in a country that has made efforts to grow its share of the international meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions market.
City Lodge Hotels CE Clifford Ross says when the group first installed internet cafés three or four years ago, integrated services digital network (ISDN) technology was not available and internet connectivity was far slower than guests experienced at their homes or offices because of bandwidth problems.
But the group has since installed ISDN lines, which has increased connectivity speed significantly.
The group introduced wireless access points or "hot spots" in public areas six months ago at all its City Lodge-branded hotels.
Except for the City Lodge in Katherine Street, Sandton, where there are wireless access points in some rooms that face the hotel's transmitter, there is no wireless access from hotel rooms because of structural issues.
Ross says the technology is available and "fairly soon" it will be possible to offer wireless connectivity in all rooms.
"I believe high-speed connectivity is a vital service, and since our launch two months ago we have had a good response from the market, so it is certainly something people are using more and more," he says.
Protea Hotels has a similar strategy. Group and sales marketing director Danny Bryer says ISDN lines have been installed at a number of hotels to facilitate internet usage and there are plans to make ISDN lines a standard within the group, in SA and elsewhere in Africa.
Protea Hotels has also installed wireless hot spots at its hotels, such as Melrose Arch, Protea Hotel Wanderers near Sandton and Victoria Junction in Cape Town, where the clients are largely business travellers,
Bryer says about 70% of the group's business travellers use internet-access services and their availability helps to attract guests.
In the past two weeks the Southern Sun group has extensively advertised its high- speed internet access roll-out across all its hotels, from standard to luxury, with an offering tailored to be affordable to each market.
The services will range from hot spots in public areas to fixed and wireless high-speed access in hotel rooms, business centres or self-service workstations for guests without laptops.
All Southern Sun hotels will offer wireless hot spots in public areas by the end of this year.
"What becomes even more interesting though, is the possibility of delivering 'on demand' movie and entertainment content to hotel guests via this infrastructure in the future," Southern Sun Hotels MD Helder Pereira says.
"We are already working on further enhancing our guest experience as a result of technology developments."
The hotel groups intend to charge little or no mark-up on the service, they say.
In some hotels guests will pay only the basic cost and at some top-of-the-range hotels, such as the Protea group's Melrose Arch, the service will be free.
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