Trends and Opportunities in the Hotel Industry

The rapid development China's economy and tourism industries have fed year-by-year expansion in China's hotel industry. But competition within the industry has also stepped up, its focus intensifying in two key areas: internationalization and smartness. The new demands of business travelers’ in the age of digitalization, while shifting through three phases – automation, networking, and smartness – have prompted hoteliers to make digitalization of services and smartness their key goals. The rapid development of big data, cloud computing and the Internet of Things also offer new opportunities, and promise a new era for the hotel industry.

H3C’s Hotel Integrated Business Solution integrates IP voice/video, wireless communications, and storage technology with basic network technologies to effectively improve hotel information management, reduce operating costs, and provide guests with diversified services, improving hotel occupancy and profitability. This solution also allows hotels to diversify their income sources and reduce expenditures, improve profitability as well as customer satisfaction.

For budget hotel chains – the most popular hotels worldwide – hotel rooms are core or even sole products. Through offering a high value proposition featuring aggressive pricing, high service standards, and reasonable comfort, budget hotel chains have become the typical form of modern hotel. Due to the similarity of chain hotels, digitalization can follow a cookie-cutter approach, with very similar solutions applied in all branches which requires high capability.

H3C’s customized easy-to-use solution has been received with high acclaim by numerous budget hotel chains.

Difficulties in Budget Hotel Network Construction

Budget hotels, with their "one-star walls, two-star halls, three-star rooms, and four-star beds" cater mainly to the needs of business travelers and people on a budget, and typically provide free broadband Internet access. For hotel guests, this is undoubtedly an important service. But from the perspective of networking and IT deployment, H3C has discovered that many hotels encounter difficulties in the following areas:

1.Network stability

In the current digital age, guests are increasingly demanding of hotel Internet services.

Furthermore, normal operation of IT systems is a basic requirement for the normal operation of a hotel. Thus not only must the hotel's basic networking and business systems provide services to guests, they must also guarantee continuous 24-hour service. But the switching and routing equipment installed in many hotels can often cause system delays and downtime as a result of insufficient hardware processing capacity or software instability, seriously affecting hotels’ quality of service. In addition, intermittent wireless signals, unstable network access speed, and network downtime can also seriously affect customers’ connected experiences, and directly result in guest loss.

2.Computer security

It may seem sufficient to ensure that the hotel's own information systems are secure, and that virus attacks experienced by guests’ systems are their own responsibility. But this is not true. Good network services will entail good guest experiences, and enhance the hotel brand. The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) and denial-of-service (DOS) attacks to which hotels are now constantly subjected, can, in addition to interrupting Internet access, cause serious information security problems for hotel guests.

3.Network access speed for VIPs

Hotels need to manage bandwidth consumed by various applications to prioritize special applications. Indeed, they must manage the bandwidth for each computer connected to the Internet. For example, using rate-limiting methods is often necessary to prevent over-consumption of bandwidth by those using certain downloading tools, ensuring that the network experience of other guests is not impacted. Therefore, port rate-limiting functionality on access-layer switches is a must. But currently, many hotels can only manage networks at application rather than user level, causing great inconvenience to hotel network managers.

In addition, Internet services provided for different rooms types may need to be different in order to retain high-end guests. The levels and types of network resources and services allocated to Deluxe Suites, Superior Rooms, and Standard Rooms may need to be differentiated.

4. Branch access HQ and hotel employees on business trips

For budget hotels, scale means profitability and competitiveness, but chain operation creates some difficulties. One of the biggest of these is information sharing – for example, how to can branch hotels be provided with constant access to HQ, and how can branch managers away on business trips be provided with access to management reports?

5.Tracking network access records

The popularity of the Internet has also increased the frequency of network security incidents, bringing these to the attention of public agencies. Almost all the governments mandate network access recording and auditing by hotels. Hotels’ high population mobility has thus made monitoring their guests' online behavior a basic requirement in China.

6.Obtaining guest information for secondary marketing

Growth in the popularity of mobile devices has gradually converted use of Wi-Fi networks to push advertising, and the ability of these networks to accept authentication by WeChat a business need. At the same time, hotel businesses have become increasingly concerned about methods for achieving effective and convenient publicity.

H3C Helps Hotels Provide a Better Internet Experience

To address the networking challenges faced by the budget hotel industry, H3C has striven to provide cost-effective solutions creating solid network foundations for hotels, thus helping hotels provide smarter network services to their digital era guests, while reducing their operating costs and greatly improving their profitability.

H3C’s distinctive solutions are as follows:

1.Network stability – H3C solution provides firm foundation

A stable network is the basis for all networked applications. And network devices must remain stable to ensure network stability, a factor which in turn depends on device cooling, and thermal stability. H3C device software, which runs on a high integrity operating system verified by many years of market adoption, is very stable. The wide-range, long-term usage of H3C products in major industries such as finance and government, and their consistent stable operation, put the software stability of these products beyond doubt.

As the demand for wireless network services in hotels increases, the wireless experience becomes more and more important. H3C formally launched its WLAN R&D team in 2000, releasing its landmark 10GB wireless controller WX6100 and the first enterprise-class product, WA2600, in 2008, and becoming first to enter the 802.11ac Gigabit era in 2014. Thus New N3C has continuously enriched and improved the choice of cutting-edge wireless product solutions available to the industry, launching a wide range products such as indoor settled, indoor distributed, and outdoor integrated micro APs, industry-leading high-performance 802.11ac wave2 APs, and high-performance wireless controllers, as well as Gigabit compatible PoE+ access switches, smart antennas, and landscaping antennas. These products provide Wi-Fi networks with 100M wireless bandwidth, Gigabit uplink, and 10G core capabilities.

To date, H3C products have been successfully applied in the National Grand Theater, the National Library, the National Stadium, Capital International Airport, Beichen Olympic Hotel, Shanghai World Expo, Guangzhou International Finance Center, Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital, Hangzhou Metro, Hong Kong University, Peking University, Fudan University, Tianjin University, Cuiwei Department Store, SOGO Department Store, the famous Haidilao Hotpot Restaurant Chain, Midea Group, Nagqu Logistics Center, Sichuan Electric Power Co., Ltd. and other industries, achieving excellent customer recognition and high market share.

2.Computer safety – H3C’s three step plan

H3C takes three crucial steps to ensure network and computer security:

● Isolation of the hotel office network from the guest network by applying 802.1Q-based VLANs, preventing guests from accessing office systems, and ensuring office network security.

● Allocating 802.1Q-based VLANs to access switch ports, isolating all rooms, isolating guests' computers even during network access.

● Enabling significance of security policies, such as wireless WIPS, prohibiting private access of level-2 routes. Along with H3C's high-performance firewalls, IPSs, and other devices, it provides hotel network's with increased levels of security.

With these precautions in place, guests in each room can rest assured, and enjoy secure, convenient and fast network access services.

3.Network access speed for VIPs – H3C provides rate management

H3C solutions allow bandwidth allocation based on IP address. Services for Deluxe Suites, Superior Rooms, and Standard Rooms can thus be differentiated, thereby improving room value, and through limitation of bandwidth abuse, providing a better overall network service experience to all guests.

4.Access to HQ from branch hotels and employees on business trips – VPN technology provides a secure data transmission highway

With H3C devices, setting up IPSec VPNs and SSL VPNs through the Internet is easy and very simple.

Managed via a web interface, simple parameter-based configuration allows hotels to set up VPN interconnections within a few minutes.

5.Tracking network access records – H3C's network devices allow monitoring of online behavior

With governments paying more attention to network security issues, high population mobility locations such as hotels have been required to log guests' network access records. ACG network devices are capable of this, and can be conveniently connected with network monitoring platforms.

6.Obtaining guest information for secondary marketing

H3C’s industry-leading wireless devices and IMC or Oasis platforms integrate many marketing functions. Guest can access WiFi by public account authentication and WeChat, along with other authentication modes – one-touch login, fixed account authentication, SMS authentication, and combination authentication. Customized advertising pages can be delivered to different user groups at different times. H3C devices also allow hotels to set network access duration, idle time disconnection, URL redirection after successful authentication, and automatic authentication (second authentication automatic after a successful authentication), providing the flexibility that convenient, efficient marketing requires.