By Simar Singh

INTERNET CONNECTIVITY has become an integral part of the hotel experience. This is-particularly important when hotels have to meet the demands of two major target demographics- the traditional business traveller and the tech-savvy millenials. Wi-Fi has now become one of the primary considerations along with service. And clearly this is something hotel chains are taking seriously.
HotelWiFiTest, a website which globally aggregates and assesses the Wi-Fi across hotels recently published a report on the quality of the Wi-Fi in hotel chains. Ranking major hotel groups based on two considerations of the quality of Wi-Fi and whether the in-room Wi-Fi is free for all guests, the report recognises the realty of global inequality or differences in the internet related infrastructural capabilities and has hence expressed the individual ratings against the consideration of the percentage of hotels that offer adequate Wi-Fi quality in a given geographical enclave.
In Asia, HotelWiFiTest places InterContinental, Oberoi and Marriott at the top of the table and ibis (which actually ranks 5th in the world top 10), Favehotel and Aston Archipelago at the bottom of the fifteen hotel groups in the region that the study considered.
Adequate Wi-Fi, as claimed by the report, is said to exist only if it is able to provide a download speed of at least 3 Mbps (Netflix’s recommendation for SD-quality streaming) and an upload speed of 500 kbps (Skype’s recommendation for non-HD high quality video calls).
In this report, a hotel judged as having adequate Wi-Fi must provide an expected download speed of at least 3 Mbps (the Netflix recommendation for SD-quality streaming) and an upload speed of 500 kbps (the Skype recommendation for high-quality non-HD video calling.
What is actually interesting is that it seems that the better the Wi-Fi quality, the lesser the percentage of hotels providing free Wi-Fi is. For instance, the top performing InterContinental boasts an impressive 87.5 per cent in Wi-Fi quality and 42 per cent in free Wi-Fi while Aston Archipelago, which sits right at the bottom of the ranks, conversely, has been graded 28.6 per cent for its quality but 84.8 per cent for its free Wi-Fi.

Shantha De Silva, Head Of South West Asia, IHG told BW Hotelier, ’Findings from our 2015 Trends Report reveals our guests value online social activity and online sharing when they travel. They want to be connected to a network, and they want to be able to do that across multiple devices. That is why we were the first international hotel company to announce free internet for our 86 million IHG Rewards Club members across our hotels globally,-whether they are dropping in for a cup of coffee or staying the night’.

The Oberoi Group’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Information Technology, Rajesh Chopra, said, ’Wi-Fi internet is a basic need and is the most important technology touch point as it enables our guests to connect with rest of the world during their stay with us. It is always our endeavour to use new generation, state of the art Wi-Fi access points, authentication systems and ample bandwidth to facilitate secure and speedy connectivity,’ adding that the service was regularly audited to make sure it remained trouble free and consistent.

Marriot’s Asia-Pacific (excluding China) Senior Director Ashish Kale told us about their Global Property Network Standard (GPNS) to ensure consistency and seamless browsing across their properties and within all areas of any property. He described it as ’corporate standards’ which were essential to ensure that their guests were never inconvenienced. Marriott is in the top three when it comes to their Wi-Fi provision according to a recent study.

The report stipulates that, ’The chain to which a hotel belongs to is one of the best predictors of Wi-Fi performance.’ This makes the report an important brand selection tool for people who believe that Wi-Fi is essential for their travels.

The full report can be found at- https://www.hotelwifitest.com/reports/271656/