Revolutionizing Hospitality Technology: The Impact of Digital Onboarding for Competitive Advantage

Introduction

I had an interesting observation before a recent business trip. It struck me that when I step into a hotel room, every facet of hospitality surpasses the comforts of my own home. There’s 24-hour room service, daily housekeeping, and even the swift arrival of an aircon technician if needed. It’s a haven of comfort, luxury, and convenience.

On the other hand, every aspect of the hotel network will pale in comparison to what I enjoy at home without fail, even in the most luxurious suites. In my humble abode, I revel in a dedicated broadband connection or Fiber to the Home (FTTH) link that boasts speeds of 1 or even 2 Gbps. My home Wi-Fi connection is secure, and I can upgrade the router every 2 to 3 years. I have a second large LED monitor for my laptop to work on. Streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, and YouTube keep me entertained and snacking late at night. A Covid-era colour inkjet printer is on standby.

So, why can’t we have the best of both worlds in a hotel room? With Digital Onboarding and a secure Wi-Fi profile, we could seamlessly connect to the hotel network. Likewise, having the capability to cast my content to the room TV securely would enable me to utilize my personal subscriptions for the latest episodes or stream my favourite Spotify and YouTube tunes. I can even request for housekeeping and room service online. Picture it: ordering room service, sipping on drinks, and indulging in the latest episodes in the lap of luxury.

The bar for hospitality is set so high in a luxury hotel that as an everyday consumer I cannot surpass it, and yet I easily outspend the hotel on consumer tech which surely is a minimal percentage a large hotel spends on coffee beans a month. From such a low base, the returns from an incremental investment in digital services far outstrip the increment returns to upgrade the already high hospitality aspect.

If we could indeed merge exceptional hospitality with efficient technology, wouldn’t that be a game-changer for the post-COVID era and the tech-savvy TikTok generation?

ANTlabs and Our Journey

Welcome to the future of hospitality, where technology meets exceptional guest experiences. At ANTlabs, we envision a transformative path that leverages Digital Onboarding to redefine how hotels engage with their guests and deliver digital services to deepen guest engagement and customer loyalty. In this blog, we embark on our journey through the Hospitality 2.0 Pyramid. This is a strategic framework, where the key to success lies in seamlessly integrating technology and hospitality, unlocking competitive advantage.

ANTlabs Hospitality 2.0 Pyramid

ANTlabs has over two decades of expertise in hospitality, collaborating with Telcos and service providers. Our technology, including internet gateways and Cloud Wi-Fi management platforms, has powered guest Wi-Fi solutions worldwide. Notably, our networking solutions played a vital role in facilitating connectivity during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, arguably the world’s largest hospitality event in recent history.

We use the Hospitality 2.0 Pyramid to systematically deconstruct the guest’s digital journey across diverse sectors, encompassing hotels, airports, stadiums, and F&B retail. At its core lies Digital Onboarding, the cornerstone upon which exceptional guest experiences are constructed.

Digital Onboarding: The Foundation for Excellence

Digital Onboarding, a seamless guest registration process, extends beyond mere Wi-Fi connectivity. It encompasses an array of user-friendly steps, including app downloads and enticing incentives for loyalty program enrollment, setting the stage for an unforgettable stay.

User Identification: A Crucial Step

Moving up the pyramid, User Identification is a pivotal phase where the recognition of users on the network takes center stage. The absence of authenticated user devices destroys the capacity to provide personalized and distinctive services.

User Recognition allows the network to associate a guest’s identity and elite member status, allowing for personalization while ensuring privacy. This is achieved via integration through the PMS interface, loyalty program databases, identity management solutions, or a combination of the above.

User Engagement: Elevating the Experience

In the middle of the pyramid, User Engagement comes into play where personalized interactions through digital services and apps enhance guest convenience and overall satisfaction.  For example, the use of AI Chatbots or just simple messaging maintains a high-tech, high-touch hospitality experience, in the absence of a trained and experienced guest relations officer.  As a returning customer, I am always vexed by talking with interns or inexperienced operators who don’t understand what I want.  In a previous stay, I didn’t have the same issue.  The use of technology can mitigate the global hospitality staff shortage and maintain a high level of guest relations.

Provision of Digital Services: Enriching the Journey with Digital Onboarding

At the pyramid’s peak lies the Provision of Digital Services. Here, the focus shifts to crafting tailored offerings and streamlining service requests and delivery, resulting in a memorable guest experience.   For example, elite status members may be entitled to premium Wi-Fi speeds, allocated public IP addresses, enjoy secured Wi-Fi connectivity, and even web filtering services on the hotel Wi-Fi network for better security.  Other services can include casting user content like NetFlix to the in-room large-screen TV, seamless access to chatbots for service requests, and many more.

The Power of Seamless Onboarding: Increasing Loyalty Program and App Adoption

This logical diagram visually illustrates how the onboarding process can increase loyalty program sign-ups and app downloads. Through Digital Onboarding, a Passpoint or Hotspot 2.0 compatible Wi-Fi profile can be effortlessly stored on the guest’s device, guaranteeing seamless login and roaming privileges within the hotel group.

Guests should be incentivized to download and install the hotel app, accept the Wi-Fi profile, and participate in the loyalty program. This strategic approach maximizes guest engagement and lays the foundation for comprehensive digital service delivery.

Merging Hospitality with Technology

The anecdote that started our journey highlights a crucial point: we deserve the best of both worlds, especially in a mid-scale to luxury hotel room. By harmonizing exceptional hospitality with efficient technology, hotels can gain a competitive edge in the post-COVID era and appeal to the tech-savvy TikTok generation.

Conclusion: Aligning Hospitality with Technology

In conclusion, the guest’s journey through the Hospitality 2.0 Pyramid encompasses onboarding, user identification, engagement, and personalized digital services. This alignment of exceptional hospitality with technology will help discerning hotels differentiate themselves in a highly competitive market.

Without Digital Onboarding and User Recognition, meaningful guest engagement is not possible. It’s akin to losing the front desk manager who recognizes your most loyal guests.  A new desk staff will greet and treat every customer the same, and guess what? Over time, your guests will also treat you just like any other hotel – without loyalty!

With Digital Onboarding, connectivity becomes seamless, and recognition instantaneous, ensuring that guests receive the elevated service they deserve.  Seamless connectivity and instant recognition can also be extended across all properties within the same hotel group or loyalty program.

And with that, we conclude our exploration of the future of hospitality technology. We trust that you’ve found these insights valuable as we navigate the dynamic intersection of hospitality and technology.

ANTlabs powers guest Wi-Fi for Millennium Hotels & Resorts

Elevating guest digital experiences and hospitality for the world-renowned hotel group

In today’s hyper-interconnected world, delivering seamless guest experiences is the key to success in the hospitality industry. ANTlabs, a leading hospitality IT solutions provider, is proud to play a pivotal role in this pursuit by providing cutting-edge solutions to Millennium Hotel & Resorts (Millennium H&R), an established and world-renowned hotel group. The successful completion of the first phase marks a significant milestone as Millennium H&R has standardized their Guest Wi-Fi portal and integrated ANTlabs’ solutions across their Middle East properties. This will greatly enhance guest satisfaction, and brand identity, and allows the IT management to streamline its operations.

ANTlabs: A Proven Innovator in Hospitality IT for Over 23 Years

With over 23 years of industry experience, ANTlabs has earned a reputation as a trailblazer in hospitality IT solutions and garnered the trust of hotels and resorts worldwide. “Our collaboration with Millennium Hotel & Resorts in the Middle East has been a testament to ANTlabs’ expertise spanning more than 2 decades in delivering exceptional IT solutions for the hospitality industry. Through our high-capacity SG5 gateways and ASP Cloud Wi-Fi Management platform, we have successfully standardized their Guest Wi-Fi experience across their Middle East properties. We are thrilled to witness the positive impact on guest satisfaction and brand identity, and we eagerly anticipate the next phase of seamless roaming and loyalty program integration.” – Mr. Peng Soon, Aw, VP Sales & BD, ANTlabs.

Standardizing Quality Hotel Wi-Fi Experience with Unmatched Flexibility

Through ANTlabs’ high-capacity SG5 gateways and the ASP Cloud Wi-Fi Management platform, Millennium H&R have achieved a unified and immersive brand identity across their properties in the Middle East. The portal standardization has amplified guest engagement and satisfaction while granting Millennium H&R the flexibility to customize services to cater to local preferences and cultural nuances.

Advanced QoS for Streamlined Bandwidth Management

Millennium H&R can now seamlessly manage and optimize bandwidth allocation with ANTlabs’ Advanced QoS features. This ensures uninterrupted connectivity for guests, regardless of their location within the premises. A multi-stage QoS engine will allow the hotel to flexibly manage the bandwidth per device, or per user account, and even assign dedicated bandwidth tiers to certain user groups if needed.

Cross-Pollination of Technology Features for Unmatched Scalability

ANTlabs’ expertise extends beyond the hospitality sector as they also serve large service providers and mobile operators. This cross-pollination of technology features allows ANTlabs to infuse the scalability and robustness of solutions designed for massive network infrastructures into the hospitality domain. Hotels and resorts benefit from state-of-the-art technologies that have proven their mettle in demanding and complex network environments. One example is the Advanced QoS feature that has multi-stage QoS control and field tested in large public venues and city-wide Wi-Fi hotspots by mobile operators.

Looking Ahead: Seamless Roaming and Loyalty Program Integration

The upcoming phase will see ANTlabs further enhancing guest experiences through seamless roaming capabilities, allowing guests to transition effortlessly between different Millennium H&R properties in the Middle East after a first visit. Moreover, the planned integration of Millennium H&R’s esteemed “MyMillennium” loyalty program with ANTlabs’ solution will encourage enrollment and offer guests exclusive benefits. Recognition of Elite members will enable Millennium H&R to extend personalized VIP experiences, reinforce customer loyalty, and deepen customer engagement and relationships.

Conclusion

With the successful completion of the first phase, Millennium H&R has taken significant strides in transforming guest experiences through standardized Guest Wi-Fi offerings and brand identity. ANTlabs’ cutting-edge solutions have elevated guest satisfaction and streamlined bandwidth management, enhancing operational efficiency. As Millennium H&R looks forward to the next phase, they anticipate even greater success in enhancing guest engagement and promoting their MyMillennium loyalty programme. With ANTlabs as their trusted HSIA Hotel Wi-Fi solutions provider, the hospitality industry can expect continuous growth in guest experiences and loyalty, solidifying Millennium H&R’s position as a leading brand in the Middle East. The collaboration underscores ANTlabs’ commitment to delivering unparalleled guest experiences while empowering Millennium H&R to achieve excellence in their hospitality services.

CapPort Support on ANTlabs Gateways

Improving Captive Portal Detection and Venue Published Information for better visibility

Captive portals are commonly used by public Wi-Fi networks to restrict access to the internet until the user agrees to certain terms and conditions or authenticates successfully. While captive portals are necessary for many public Wi-Fi networks, they can be frustrating for users who are unable to connect to the internet until they have completed the login process.

Frustrations can stem from captive portals not loading fast enough or freezing, and some login methods can be lengthy or complicated. Thankfully, ANTlabs gateways provide a plethora of seamless login methods, including social media login, SMS OTP, PMS integration, Hotspot 2.0, etc to suit many usage scenarios. CapPort support on ANTlabs gateways offers an elegant solution to the other aspect of the problem, while providing improved captive portal detection and venue published information.

Improved Captive Portal Detection

ANTlabs gateways support the use of DHCP option 114 to indicate the captive portal API URL during IP address assignment. This means that supported devices can immediately fetch the API content after connecting to the network, which prompts the user to log in if the network is identified as captive based on the API response. There is no need to redirect or intercept the initial web requests that would trigger security warnings in modern browsers or delay the delivery of captive portals.

In other words, CapPort support on ANTlabs gateways enables faster and more accurate reliable detection of captive portals, and greatly improve the user experience and reduce frustration.  The diagram on the left shows an example of an Android phone’s locked screen showing the visual cues to allow the user to click the captive portal URL.

Venue Published Information for Better Visibility

In addition to improving captive portal detection, CapPort support on ANTlabs gateways also enables venue published information. Without this feature, after a user is successfully authenticated, they are free to move to other web content and the venue will lose the opportunity to engage with the customer further.

When a CapPort message is displayed on a device using captive portal API, the user can interact with it to immediately open their internet browser and navigate to the Venue Info URL at any time. This feature is particularly useful in scenarios such as staying at a hotel, where guests may want to easily access information about services or amenities. By simply clicking on the system message, users can access venue information, including spa, restaurant hours or any promotions offer. With the addition of location-aware websites, the guest journey becomes even more intuitive and seamless.  The diagram on the right shows the user interface where a user can find the venue URL by clicking on the “Open Site” icon.

It is worth noting that more mobile devices are beginning to support CapPort feature, specifically Apple (iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur) devices and Android 11 onward. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, CapPort support on ANTlabs gateways is a powerful tool for improving captive portal detection and providing venue published information. By using DHCP option 114 to provide the captive portal API URL and including the Venue Info URL in the CapPort message, CapPort support streamlines the process of connecting to public Wi-Fi networks and provides users with easy access to important information about the venue. As a result, CapPort support can lead to increased customer satisfaction, repeat business, and revenue for businesses.

How to deploy ANTlabs Advanced QoS/QoS+ and dramatically improve your Wi-Fi network

Are users complaining about slow WiFi speeds? Do you want to provide your guests, or staff with all the bandwidth they need?

Are you struggling to meet bandwidth requirements for guest WiFi, and cringing at the prospect of asking Management for yet another budget request to buy more internet connections?  Wished you read this article before the last budget request?

Have you been asked to implement QoS on your network but don’t know where to start? This blog post will explain how Advanced QoS can help you with all the above. Let’s get started!

Basic QoS 101

Quality of Service (QoS) can help you by providing better control and management of your traffic. QoS can improve your user experience by giving certain types of traffic priority over others. This can be especially useful if you have time-sensitive applications or need to manage large amounts of traffic.

Without QoS, your network would be a free-for-all where every application competes for bandwidth equally. That might work fine for small networks, but as soon as you start adding more users and applications, things can get bogged down quickly.  With QoS, you can give priority to the traffic that matters most to your business. For example, you can prioritize voice traffic over email or video streaming. Alternatively, you may decide that social media usage like YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter is banned in your network.

However, not all QoS features are built equal. You need to understand that simple QoS solutions don’t help much, if at all. For example, simple rate-limit, or device-level QoS control targets individual devices. It has no idea what applications are being used, who the user is, or how many devices within the same room are hogging all the bandwidth. A small group of users can monopolize the network. Implementing QoS can be complex, but the benefits are worth it.

What is Advanced QoS / QoS+ and how does it work?

Save money and time, while improving the end-user experience: Advanced QOS (AQoS) and Advanced QoS Plus (AQoS+) module from ANTlabs control who gets priority, where, and when. No need to buy expensive network equipment, and spend days installing and troubleshooting, as both are software modules add-on to our ANTlabs gateways.  It is easy to deploy and optimizes throughput over a network with a multi-stage QoS engine and customizable application shaping. It enables you to grant VIP users more bandwidth, speeds up those applications that need them (e.g., VoIP or IPTV), and it provides comprehensive control over the quality of your network.  The IT administrator just needs to define the locations, and QoS plans that is to be applied to different user groups, and simply configure on a graphical web-based interface on our managed Cloud Wi-Fi platform (ASP/Cloud ASP).

ANTlabs Advanced QoS / QoS+ is a powerhouse

With more than 20 years of R&D and industry experience for visitor-based networking in hospitality and large venues, ANTlabs has purpose-built the QoS engine to optimize hospitality Wi-Fi, and offer world-class airports and sports venues superior guest Wi-Fi solutions.

One of the unique features of the ANTlabs Advanced QoS 3-stage engine is its capability to allow multiple devices to share a single bandwidth rate limit per user. For example, you wish to allocate 10MB per guest or staff. Each user will only use up this amount of bandwidth among all his/her active devices, and it will be shared equally amongst them.

With the Advanced QoS 3-stage engine, bandwidth utilization can be maximized by creating differentiated classes of services for different groups of users.

All user traffic goes through the Advanced QoS 3-stage engine:

Stage 1.  As we mentioned earlier, the first stage engine is unique to ANTlabs, and applies bandwidth rate limit to the individual user instead of device-level. Together with authentication, this innovation allows different users to be treated according to their VIP status or needs, instead of blindly applying one simple limit to a device.

Stage 2.  This second stage engine defines different QoS Tiers (Guaranteed Tier, Premium Tier and Basic Tier) where different user groups can be assigned to the desired tier. Between the tiers, higher or lower priorities are given as to who gets the bandwidth, and the IT Manager can specify the total maximum bandwidth allocated to a tier for better control.  In this way, no single group of users can monopolize the whole network and the IT Dept has better visibility and control.  Furthermore, the surplus bandwidth from any bandwidth tier, can be temporarily re-allocated to another congested bandwidth tier automatically, optimizing network resources.

Stage 3.  In the third stage, global application traffic shaping can be applied to network ports used by applications. This allows the bandwidth used by specific types of applications (of all users) to be controlled further.  In this way, more control can be applied so that no application will be starved for network resources.  Certain applications’ bandwidth consumption can be suppressed or given more priority to use up the network bandwidth.

Advanced QoS Plus (QoS+) is the latest innovation leap by ANTlabs.  It has all the features of the original Advanced QoS module and more! As some applications like BitTorrent evolve to evade port-based application blocking, Advanced QoS+ classifies the applications more accurately based on website categorization without relying on which network ports are being used.  This signature-based website categorization is regularly updated to improve accuracy.  Another improvement is more fine-grained control for the global application shaping.  By allowing you to define QoS policies for different user groups, you can optimize the network further with better accuracy.

For example, you can create a special user group to give priority to streaming services.   When you apply this to paying customers or VVIP customers, they will be able to enjoy better quality streaming in their rooms or anywhere in the network.   You can also make your network more family-friendly and safer by blocking adult-related, gambling sites or known blacklisted sites.

How does Advanced QoS /QoS+ help improve the user experience?

As far as the users are concerned, they will find that applications will now run better on their devices with Advanced QoS enabled. They may not even notice any slowdown or pausing in their applications, and simply assume more internet connections were added. If you are a VIP user, you will be pleased that even in public areas, you enjoy a faster and better quality of bandwidth compared to guest users. For the management, you can be assured that the existing network resources are well-optimized, and buying more Internet bandwidth can be delayed or dispensed with.  In some cases, you may even scale down the number of internet connections, and save costs since network usage has become more efficient.

Conclusion

In conclusion, by deploying ANTlabs’ Advanced QoS / QoS+, you can greatly improve your network performance and ensure that critical applications always have the bandwidth they need. You don’t need a lot of network expertise or expensive hardware to implement.  By carefully planning your QoS strategy and implementing it correctly, you can take your network to the next level and please everyone (including the bosses!), leaving you more time to handle other pressing matters.

Make sure to include ANTlabs’ Advanced QoS or Advanced QoS Plus module in your next budget request so that you don’t need to go back to ask for more in future!