General

Wi-Fi IN INDIA:

Wi-Fi technology in India is still in the Infancy stage and does have a lot of growth potential. Various service providers like BSNL, Microsense, Dax Networks, etc. are flocking in setting up hot-spots all over the country to tap the market.

Wi-Fi in Indian Hotels:

Looking into the Hotel sector in India, most of the hotels either do not provide Internet services to their guests or they have a wired LAN system. There are very few hotels in the country which have gone Wi-Fi and even there the guests have to shell out quite some amount of money to use the services.

As of now, there are very few hotel chains in the country which have adopted the technology. Some of them being:

• Taj Group:

o Taj Mahal, Mumbai

o Taj President, Mumbai

o Taj Corormandel, Chennai

o Taj Connemara, Chennai

o Fisherman''s Cove, Chennai

o Taj Bengal, Kolkata

o Taj Lake Palace, Udaipur

• ITC Group:

o Grand Maratha Sheraton, Mumbai

o Maurya Sheraton, Delhi

o Chola Sheraton, Chennai

o ITC Grand Kakatiya Sheraton, Hyderabad

• Welcome Group

o Marriott, Delhi

• Hotel Oberoi Grand, Calcutta

• Le Royal Meridien, Chennai

• Hotel Shanti Palace, Delhi

• Hotel Pacific & Hotel President, Dehradun

• Hotel Park Residency, to name a few

Services Provided:

Most of the hotels which have installed Wi-Fi in their premises offer the basic services. The most common services which these hotels provide are:

• Internet Access – being able to connect online from anywhere in the hotel, let it be the room or the lobby or the poolside.

• Printer Via Wi-Fi – the guests have the facility of being anywhere in the hotel and being able to give documents for printing to business room.

• Integrated Billing – the guests are billed for all the services they use at the time of check-out

• Roaming – guests can buy prepaid coupons for using Wi-Fi at one the hotel and can use it any different hotel of that group in any city across India

• Usage Reporting – some of the hotels also offer reporting services so that guests can check their usage and bills online.

• Automated CICO – a few budget hotels, like Ginger Hotels, have automated the whole check-in check-out procedure and instead have installed a vending machine for providing room keys to the guests

ADVANTAGES:

Setting up Wi-Fi service in a hotel