Today’s hotel wireless networks support a greater breadth of devices beyond guests’ phones and laptops, including smart TVs, employee safety devices, thermostats, door locks, and in-room control systems. The network infrastructure must be up to the task of handling this high density of devices, and innovative strategies such as bringing WiFi equipment access points directly into the guestroom are enabling hotels to “deliver stronger, more reliable connections. This is something that is critical as streaming, video conferencing, and device usage continue to increase,” explained Kevin Sweeney, chief product officer, Enseo. In conversation with LODGING, Sweeney and two of his industry peers—Speleos Dravillas, chief revenue officer, Nomadix, and Pierre Trudeau, president/CTO, Positron—share further innovative approaches to optimizing network bandwidth, coverage, performance, and security.
Ensuring Proper Coverage
Speleos Dravillas: A common mistake hoteliers make occurs when building the network and trying to keep costs down, rather than ensuring full coverage across the property. When you look at brand specifications, properties still only require coverage for laptops, missing support for IoT devices and phones that have limited antenna/coverage supported. Hotels also miss support for the number of devices connecting to the network in a specific area, which usually changes per access point and is dependent on the types of security and how many networks the access points support.
Pierre Trudeau: Unfortunately, some properties still think using WiFi 7 access points from corridor/hallway installations can work due to their more powerful radios. This simply does not work and prevents guests from benefiting from the investment. What is needed are carefully located in-room access points with optimized channel and transmit settings, robust roaming, and band steering capabilities. Hotels can then leverage the WiFi management capabilities to ensure a clean wireless environment that will facilitate optimal connectivity for all guest devices and seamless roaming across their property.
Kevin Sweeney: One of the most common mistakes is expecting to deliver multi-gig internet speeds to guests without properly designing and implementing a network that can handle that level of performance. Bandwidth coming into the building is only part of the equation. Without the right infrastructure, access point placement, and network configuration, that speed never reaches the end user. Another frequent issue is using equipment from multiple network manufacturers. While it may seem flexible, it often creates challenges around centralized management, troubleshooting, and updates. A unified network ecosystem allows for more consistent performance, streamlined support, and better long-term reliability. … On the infrastructure side, inadequate planning for IPTV can lead to significant performance issues. This includes not accounting for proper cabling, switch capacity, or selecting switches that aren’t optimized for multicast traffic. Finally, casting from guest devices is often underestimated. Because casting relies on the guest network, it requires a holistic approach between the TV system and the WiFi solution provider to work properly.
Monitoring Network Performance
Kevin Sweeney: The most effective way to monitor and measure network performance is by leveraging enterprise-grade equipment supported by a single, centralized network controller. This approach provides full visibility across the entire guest network, allowing technology engineers to monitor performance in real time, identify issues proactively, and ensure a consistent experience for both guests and staff.
Speleos Dravillas: There are many tools and processes to monitor and measure network performance, typically done by the service provider. First, the hotel must define the metrics required for the property and types of access required for their guests’ WiFi habits, using dashboards that specifically show the bandwidth used and the number of devices using that bandwidth. Hotels should also have the ability to dig deeper into specific areas of the network using simple network monitoring tools and the additional tools granted by the vendors for the access points and switches. Properties then need to continually monitor the available bandwidth and basic usage across the network. The standard user flow to onboard and connect to the network should be measured as well, making sure it is quick and simple. The last thing hotels want is constant calls to the front desk complaining about access or slow speeds. Sometimes no news is good news.
Pierre Trudeau: There is a need to couple information from the WiFi management platform and correlate it with information about the underlying Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure. The WiFi (and Gigabit Ethernet) infrastructure needs to handle adequate service-aware prioritization to make sure critical phone calls and IPTV/streaming usage consistently operate flawlessly. This also applies to private SSIDs used by the hotel for back-of-house applications and other internal applications.
The Latest Network Security Features
Kevin Sweeney: One of the latest developments is the adoption of WiFi 7, which introduces enhanced encryption capabilities between guest devices and network infrastructure. These improvements help protect sensitive data while delivering faster, more reliable connections. Equally important is maintaining a physical separation between guest and back-of-house networks. Physically segmenting these environments ensures that guest activity cannot impact critical hotel systems, reducing risk and strengthening overall security.
Speleos Dravillas: There’s a fine line in network security when dealing with guest access due to the need to keep things simple for connectivity while making it secure. Moving to the latest WPA3 for back-of-house operations and employees, as well as supporting more secure connections, like Passpoint for guests, helps optimize security across the guest journey.
Pierre Trudeau: Ideally, the Gigabit Ethernet should support strong encryption (at least 128-bit keys) and traffic shaping to ensure mission-critical applications are protected, including their minimal bandwidth needs, in the presence of other less critical services or traffic usage.
Conducting Network Upgrades
Kevin Sweeney: Upgrading a hotel network requires a strategic, end-to-end approach to ensure long-term performance, reliability, and scalability. One key best practice is standardizing on a single equipment manufacturer for switches and access points. This creates a more unified network environment, simplifying management, improving compatibility, and streamlining support.
Another important consideration is access point placement. Bringing access points into the guestroom, when possible, significantly improves signal strength and consistency, delivering a better experience for today’s high-bandwidth, multi-device users. Strong infrastructure practices are equally critical. Proper cable labeling, patch panels, and maintaining clean, well-organized network rooms all contribute to easier maintenance and faster troubleshooting. Environmental factors also matter, as dust, lint, and heat can degrade equipment over time, so keeping network rooms clean, cool, and well-ventilated is essential. Additionally, ensuring battery backups are up to date helps protect against power surges and unexpected outages.
Speleos Dravillas: A proper site survey and heatmap should be conducted by the [hotel’s provider], along with ensuring that switching and cabling infrastructure is sufficient for expansion and growth. This also includes determining which specific technologies are being upgraded and validation that backwards compatibility is available (older equipment will be used on newer networks).
Pierre Trudeau: Hotels should reuse their existing coaxial infrastructure for Gigabit Ethernet (over coax). This provides faster, more secure, cost-effective installations by eliminating the need to rewire, which is costly and disruptive to guests and hotel operations. Reusing the existing coax infrastructure saves up to 80 percent of the cost to rewire and reduces installation time by 75 percent. Reuse of the coax eliminates revenue loss resulting from rooms taken out of inventory for an extended period of time.
User-Friendly Guest Interface
Speleos Dravillas: User-friendliness needs to balance two things: simplicity for the guest and providing the necessary hotel information. Making it easy for the user to log in to the network is paramount to keeping them happy. That has to also be balanced by the need for the hotel to utilize this touchpoint for providing information to the guest. To optimize this, the marketing team needs to understand and optimize what is shared with the guest as they connect to the network.
Kevin Sweeney: When designed properly, little to no interface is needed. Guests shouldn’t have to think about connecting as they expect seamless, instant access. One of the biggest pain points is requiring guests to log in multiple times or reconnect to different SSIDs as they move throughout the property. This creates friction and frustration. Instead, hotels should focus on a unified network experience that allows guests to connect once and stay connected everywhere.
On a Budget
4 Best Practices for Cost-Effectively Meeting Guests’ WiFi Expectations
Speleos Dravillas, chief revenue officer, Nomadix, an ASSA ABLOY company, offers the following tips:
- Fix density before buying more bandwidth. Validate coverage and support for the number of devices by the network before just throwing more bandwidth at something that might not be a bandwidth problem.
- Upgrade switches and access points before ISP speed upgrades. This ensures the internal network is not the bottleneck before increasing connectivity to the outside world.
- Prioritize guestrooms and high-traffic zones. Make sure that where the hotel guests will access the network offers ample availability of signal and coverage.
- Deploy bandwidth controls instead of over-provisioning. It is always more cost-effective to control and manage things properly instead of just increasing bandwidth.
