Wireless Internet hotspots worldwide are likely to increase by 25 percent this year, and increasingly hoteliers will add voice-over-Wi-Fi service, according to research published by New York-based ABI Research this week.
The firm forecasts that the number of Wi-Fi hotspots will reach 179,500 this year. Although almost three-quarters of those sites are in North America and Europe, the rate of hotspot growth in the Asia Pacific region is such that it will come close to matching the number in North America by 2012, according to ABI.
The hospitality industry provides about 46,000 hotspots worldwide. Higher-end hotels are an area of Wi-Fi hotspot growth, said Stan Schatt, vice president and research director of networking for ABI. Although many have installed hotspots in public areas in the past, they have been slower to stretch that access to rooms because they have already installed Ethernet access in the rooms.
Upgrading to voice-over-Wi-Fi, however, has become an attractive option for those hotels because it can improve service. High-end hotels are using the service to replace such disruptive communication systems as employees' two-way radios, Schatt said.
Free Internet access remains much more common in midprice hotels, although there is some movement for availability in the higher tiers, particularly those that focus on business travel
(BTN, Feb. 5). The most outrageous Internet charges are in Europe, where it's not uncommon for a hotel to charge as much as €25 as a daily fee, Schatt said. "That has not gone down, and there doesn't seem to be any real trend toward that price decreasing soon," he said.
Research also indicates that business travelers prefer to use the Internet service available in hotels for a fee even when there are free municipal Internet options nearby, he said. "They're looking for higher bandwidth and ad-free performance," Schatt said. "The municipal offerings are not that dependable."