Interview With SuperClick Networks - Buzz Around LOW Speed Internet Access (HITEC 2002 Video)

Hospitality and the Internet
A business traveller arrives at the front desk and asks "is there Internet in the room?" and then a combination of "How much per day?" and "is there a charge for local calls?" ....( 30% of telephone traffic is taken up with calls to local ISP phone numbers)

The above scenario establishes a problem for the Hotelier. "The guests utilize the phone lines to transmit and receive data on the Internet. This may cause a shortage of lines for normal voice calls and long distance call revenues for the hotel."

Our solution, SIMS, caters to both the hotel's and the guests concerns. We offer access to the Internet to the guests through their own modems without occupying the phonelines. In addition, we offer High-speed ethernet connectivity, which is expected and appreciated by the business guest.The administration can also benefit from the infrastructure's features.

We have prepared SIMS with an understanding that Guests and hotels do not want to be involved with computer support, changing of configurations and settings.

SIMS is a complete Hospitality Visitor-Based Network. As an Industry leader, Superclick Networks strives to insure that the SIMS and Superclick Box , or the hardware portion of our solution , are optimized for your particular property.

SuperClick, is currently providing the Four Points Sheraton Airport in Montreal/Dorval with a unique way to reduce its telecommunications costs, while ensuring that Hotel guests have the most reliable Internet access.

The Sheraton faced a serious ongoing problem - as an airport property, 89% of its clientele is corporate travelers, consequently these guests create a high Internet demand in the early evenings, after check-in. A number of guests would then log-on to the Internet and keep the connection all night - thus making it impossible for other guests to make an outside phone call, let alone check their email due to occupied trunks.

Therefore, the Four Points Sheraton had to add an additional T1 line to manage the demand. Even at two T1 lines, guests were still not capable to successfully establish an Internet connection or simply unable to make an outside call.

This meant that often, to satisfy a guest complaint, the Hotel staff were giving significant rebates, sometimes as often as five or six times a day. Between the rebates and the multiple T1 lines, the hotel was losing thousands of dollars and facing the possibility of losing many of its loyal guests.

Hotel guests expect and demand high-speed access, but hotels generally lose money on that service because they are forced to buy multiple T1 lines, while continuing to experience a shortage of phone lines.

THAT'S WHERE SUPERCLICK COMES IN!

SuperClick allows the hotel to provide access on demand but with two significant added value features:

Via the Patton RAS card, guests' calls are re-routed from phone lines, which reduces the need for the hotel to maintain numerous separate, dedicated and expensive lines. In some cases, the savings can equal almost $12,000 a year.

The hotel will be able to track usage by guest and charge them accordingly.

"We've been able to reduce our two T1 lines to just one, which has already saved us big dollars" said Marco Carelli, General Manager "…and, since we've had the SuperClick system installed, we have not had one single guest complaint about Internet access. You can't put a value on keeping our guests satisfied, it's priceless."

Kevin Heilbronner is the US Editor for hsyndicate.com, wiredhotelier.com and hospitalitynet.org, providing content for these websites in the form of articles and both audio and video interviews. Based outside of Washington DC, Heilbronner has worked with Hospitality Net to conduct interviews at several hospitality trade shows in the US and Europe over the last year. A familiar voice in Washington, DC, Heilbronner is the stadium announcer for the NBA's Washington Wizards, WNBA's Washington Mystics, WUSA's Washington Freedom and DC United of MLS. He resides in Centreville, VA and can be reached via [email protected].