Help Your Guests Avoid the Public Wifi Trap
A five star guest experience includes a reliable, convenient, secure internet connection where ever your guests may go
Today traveling requires internet connectivity. The days of carrying around a heavy guidebook for information and postcard stamps to stay in touch with friends and family belong to the pre internet era.
TripAdvisor and Expedia help us to plan our trips, while WhatsApp, and Instagram make sure that our friends and family always know what we are doing.
But without an internet connection, smartphones are merely expensive calculators and cameras. Our smartphones, are only as useful as our ability to connect to the internet.
While at home, our phones seamlessly bounce between our mobile phone operators and wifi. But when traveling overseas. This isn’t quite so easy. While some guests choose to pay expensive overseas data packages, or purchase local sim cards, many people choose instead to “just use wifi”.
Just using wifi isn’t nearly as ubiquitous, convenient, and secure as many travelers think. At Portier Technologies, we believe that providing a five star experience for your guest includes providing fast, secure, reliable internet during their stay.
Public wifi isn’t always available
While some cities like Tel Aviv, San Francisco and Seoul offer free wifi throughout the city, many other cities do not. In China, guests are often required to access the internet via a phone number. If a user has this, it makes the need for public wifi unnecessary.
Other cities like Hong Kong have public wifi networks available, but to login guests must use login via a code sent to email, which is impossible to receive unless you have an internet connection.
Even if a guest is able to get onto a public wifi network, public wifi networks can be spotty, slow and unreliable. Making calls, getting directions or uploading videos to Instagram can be frustrating if you’re relying on a spotty and slow public internet connection.
Cafe and Restaurant wifi isn’t convenient
Many travelers then will rely on being able to pick up wifi networks from shops, restaurants and cafes. Restaurants and cafes have begun to stop this and now many require guests to purchase an item in order to connect to the internet. After they logging in, these connections are often limited to an hour or two of internet time.
At Portier, we encourage travelers around the world to stop at beautiful cafes in Istanbul, Hong Kong or Hanoi for a beautiful cup of coffee. But a great guest experience is about stopping for coffee when you want to, and not when you need to get online for wifi.
A beautiful cup of coffee at Cafe Nang in Hanoi for instance, is great experience for anyone visiting the city. But guests shouldn’t have to stop for a cup of coffee just so that a guest can respond to a WhatsApp message from home, or get directions to their next destination.
Public wifi isn’t secure
Providing a five star guest experience includes protecting your guests’ data, privacy and information. Public wifi is notoriously insecure, and leaves your guests vulnerable to hacking, fishing and snooping.
And while getting directions to a guests’ next location doesn’t necessarily put sensitive information at risk of hacking, many guests frequently check email, and bank accounts which all leave sensitive passwords and information at much greater risk.
Banks, email providers and services that provide sensitive information understand the dangers of accessing public wifi networks, and as a result often restrict access to accounts especially when travelers are trying to log in from new insecure networks overseas. The result of this is that guests can sometimes get themselves locked out of their email, bank accounts and credit cards. And no one wants to feel stuck in a country without access to money.
Give your guests a better customer experience
Portier Phones allow your guests to safely, conveniently and reliably connect up to five devices to 4G networks while they explore, and discover your city or resort.
Guests can also use in-built staff-to-guest and guest-to-staff chat provide an additional level of care and will make them feel safe, whether or property of off. Guests can always ask for help, share their location or simply call the hotel when they need to. No more unsafe public wifi networks, no more slow connections, no more roaming — these are just a fraction of the benefits that come with a Portier Phone.
Originally published at www.goportier.com
