How Much Bandwidth Does Your Property Need?

Two years ago, BioMarin, a pharmaceutical firm based in San Rafael, Calif., called Inn Marin to book an offsite training session. This wasn’t unusual since the 69-room independent hotel is located eight miles up the road from the company’s headquarters. And with only 35 people attending, the meeting requirements were far from onerous. But there was one last-minute request that nearly caused Inn Marin to lose this booking. BioMarin needed an Internet connection that was six megabits per second (Mbps) or faster to allow 20 desktop computers to log into the corporate server in San Rafael. And the DSL line coming into the hotel was only capable of 1 Mbps down and 1/2 Mbps up. “I just about had a heart attack,” says Inn Marin General Manager Robert Marshall. “That’s when I realized that we couldn’t keep doing business like this.”

After getting a handful of BioMarin computers connected and successfully pulling off the meeting, Marshall and Kirk Hylan, owner of INsite Networks, Inn Marin’s IT consultant, resolved to upgrade the hotel’s Internet bandwidth to something more usable. The process took nine months and numerous consultations with broadband providers in the area before the two found the right people at Comcast to bring a fiber-optic line directly to their door. The cable company was looking to make a big push into the commercial broadband space and saw a unique opportunity with Inn Marin to show off the capabilities of its new fiber product.

High-speed fiber was a good fit for the Inn Marin because the hotel had the foresight to lay fiber-optic telecom lines between all the buildings when the five-acre property went through a renovation in 1999. After doing some infrastructure improvements to the nearby area, Comcast hooked the hotel up with broadband that delivered more than 400 Mbps up and down. Marshall was giddy at the possibilities. “I wanted to put a banner up on the freeway that said, ‘Get 400 Mbps here.’”

And while this was by far the fastest speed available in the area, Marshall is quick to point out that fiber is capable of much more. “When the market matches these speeds, we’ll be able to turn it up to 800 Mbps,” he says.

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While Inn Marin now has a huge bandwidth lead on its comp set, Marshall knows that accommodating the Internet demands of guests and group business is one of the trickiest things for hoteliers to do right now. Yet properly allocating bandwidth across a property has become absolutely essential to good hotel operations. “No matter how big that pipe is, it’s never enough,” says Arnon Levy, president and CEO of Guest-Tek. His company made waves earlier this year by acquiring the networking technology company iBahn. “Imagine if you had everyone watching Netflix in their hotel rooms—the bandwidth requirements would be unbelievable.” Levy adds that most hotels will be performing a balancing act over the next few years to figure out how to match the right amount of bandwidth provided to what’s being requested by guests. “It’s going to be very difficult to make everybody happy.”

Usage trends aren’t the only factor hotels need to account for. “The number of devices per room, isn’t just one or two anymore,” says Thomas Cheng, senior product line manager at Netgear, a long-time networking equipment manufacturer. “It’s like four or five, six or seven. If you have a family checking in and everybody brings at least one or two devices, then it can add up pretty fast.”

Both recommend that hoteliers take a centralized approach to installing broadband and advise using a controller that can orchestrate the communication between all the Internet access points scattered across the property.

Marshall is in the process of adding a controller that matches the capabilities of Inn Marin’s new broadband connection. “It was such a long process that it was better for us to wait until the connection was finalized before we bought the equipment, since everything has changed so quickly,” he says.

Once it’s in place, the new equipment also will control how the broadband is parceled out to the various buildings on the property, Marshall says. “So we control how much goes to the guestrooms, for instance, and can give priority to certain types of usage.” He adds that the hotel will do its best to have 400 Mbps in the meeting room to make it an ideal environment for video conferencing.

“Internet is the fourth utility, so the quality of the service is really important,” says Fred Reeder, CEO of access gateway specialist Nomadix. “Adding high-quality bandwidth is important but not when there are other factors that aren’t allowing your guests to use the bandwidth that you’re making available to them.”

He adds that hoteliers need to know how the bandwidth is currently being used so they can prioritize different types of usage. Packet inspection equipment can help you figure out if guests are using the Internet to download movie torrents or to make voice over IP calls, and then you can prioritize and make more bandwidth available for one activity over the other. “You don’t want to overpay for excess bandwidth when it isn’t necessary,” he says.

This idea of optimizing the actual bandwidth available to a hotel is echoed by Netgear’s Cheng. “Budget is a concern because a lot of hotels are providing Internet as a free service, so they want to make sure they don’t sink too much money into what they consider cost-centered spending.”

Levy takes the cost idea even further, advocating for ways to make high-speed Internet a revenue producer. “I’m a massive proponent of charging for Internet,” Levy says. “Bandwidth is not like coffee in that you know that guests are just going to have one or two cups. Some are going to drink gallons.”

According to Levy, there’s zero price elasticity when it comes to high-speed Internet. “Historically, there’s no difference in the actual usage for hotels that charge for high-speed Internet versus usage for hotels that don’t charge.”

He adds that the only way to satisfy the needs of the clients in the future is for hotels to create some sort of a revenue source from high-speed Internet and then reinvest the money back into the network and in buying more bandwidth. “That’s the only way that, moving forward, you’re going to be able to keep up to the demands of the consumer.”

For Marshall at Inn Marin, the bandwidth improvements mean that he can attract more groups and business travelers looking for reliable high-speed connections back to corporate headquarters. “We’ve been talking to local companies about bringing more meetings here,” he says. “There’s also the tech corridor just down Interstate 101. We believe there’s a lot of business in the area that we need to develop.” Marshall says the next upgrade in the works for Inn Marin’s new fiber broadband network will come when Comcast adds a line for voice that will provides free calls across the entire United States. He adds, “Of course, we’ll pass this saving along to guests.”

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