FIGURE A

People who live in glass houses should have WiFi. Click picture for a larger image.

In a recent survey of guests using the hotel's wireless high-speed Internet access, wireless availability ranked high among business travelers and was indicated as a factor in choosing their hotel.

[I recently stayed at a hotel in Orlando without high-speed access for IBM's Lotusphere and it was quite literally a traumatic experience to be away from broadband during the evening hours. I shudder just thinking about it. --DG]

It was not that long ago that the debate was between dial-up and high-speed. What a difference a few changes in technology can make. Today the deluxe menu is all about the wires, or lack of them as the case may be.

According to Joe Palmieri, the general manager at the Hilton Dallas Lincoln Centre, "Providing not only high-speed access, but convenience in connecting wirelessly, positions the hotel as proactive in staying ahead of our guests' needs. We know that satisfied customers are repeat customers."

The hospitality industry is a business where convenience and service are paramount. Satisfaction equates to revenue. Today's mobile workers are rapidly becoming dependent on information they can access any time from anywhere. Laptops are a necessity for the road warrior, and you can now access the Internet wirelessly in venues from airports to coffee shops and even while watching a hockey game at the stadium in New York City, expectations are exceptionally high for accessing the Internet at the home-away-from-home. While high speed access is today's critical issue, forecasters predict that wireless will take front and center stage within the next few years.

Leading providers of high speed Internet for the hospitality industry include Wayport which promotes 700 hotels as customers, STSN which has 420 hotels with wireless connectivity and StayOnline which has 215 hotels it services. Only StayOnline promotes a 100% wireless solution. For older buildings, including historic buildings, cutting Ethernet wiring from the mix makes the wireless playing field an equal game for all.

This winter, the Hilton Dallas Lincoln Centre installed wireless high-speed Internet access with the help of Atlanta based StayOnline. Palmieri says the decision to go 100% wireless was based, in part, on the portability and the growth of wireless chips in laptops. Retrofitting the building with a wired system would have been expensive, and the system might have become obsolete in a not so distant future.