CBRS: An Alternative to Hotel WiFi

By Greg Naj­jar, Direc­tor of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment at Advanced RF Tech­nolo­gies, Inc. (ADRF) — 02/28/2019

The emer­gence of Ama­zon has increased cus­tomer expec­ta­tions across every indus­try and is chang­ing hos­pi­tal­i­ty best prac­tices for pro­vid­ing a bet­ter guest expe­ri­ence. Now, hotels must look beyond basic ameni­ties and offer a stream­lined, con­sis­tent cus­tomer expe­ri­ence only pos­si­ble with a large scale roll out of advanced tech­nolo­gies. This can range from mobile appli­ca­tions that enable fast check-in to mobile room keys and hotel soft­ware used for video sur­veil­lance and data ana­lyt­ics.

The emer­gence of Ama­zon has increased cus­tomer expec­ta­tions across every indus­try and is chang­ing hos­pi­tal­i­ty best prac­tices for pro­vid­ing a bet­ter guest expe­ri­ence. Now, hotels must look beyond basic ameni­ties and offer a stream­lined, con­sis­tent cus­tomer expe­ri­ence only pos­si­ble with a large scale roll out of advanced tech­nolo­gies. This can range from mobile appli­ca­tions that enable fast check-in to mobile room keys and hotel soft­ware used for video sur­veil­lance and data ana­lyt­ics. The­se appli­ca­tions require a robust and secure con­nec­tiv­i­ty infra­struc­ture that solu­tions such as Cit­i­zens Broad­band Radio Ser­vice (CBRS) is equipped to han­dle. CBRS is a pri­vate LTE cel­lu­lar band that can be light­ly licensed or shared amongst the pub­lic or enter­pris­es with the help of in-build­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty devices such as dis­trib­ut­ed anten­na sys­tems (DAS), which are dis­persed across floors of a hotel to ampli­fy cel­lu­lar sig­nals.

Pro­vid­ing this new wave of offer­ings to hotel guests requires blan­ket con­sis­ten­cy across the entire build­ing, which can’t be accom­plished using WiFi alone. WiFi is declin­ing as users strug­gle to con­nect or expe­ri­ence a slow con­nec­tion. As a result, guests may opt to use their own cell phone ser­vice, leav­ing some with­out access to smart hotel ameni­ties. CBRS, unlike WiFi, takes con­sumer deci­sions out of the con­nec­tiv­i­ty equa­tion as guests auto­mat­i­cal­ly opt into the secure ser­vice through prox­im­i­ty. Man­age­ment can’t assume every guest will con­nect to WiFi when they arrive, pro­vid­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to install CBRS enabled sys­tems to pow­er their wire­less ser­vices.

By instant­ly con­nect­ing, hotel staff will gain bet­ter insights into the effi­cien­cy of their oper­a­tions and offer­ings leav­ing guests with a high­er qual­i­ty expe­ri­ence.

Man­age­ment Use Cas­es

From a build­ing man­age­ment per­spec­tive, own­ers are look­ing at CBRS as a robust plat­form to run their busi­ness. CBRS’s pri­vate fea­ture offers hotel staff con­trol over the data gen­er­at­ed in their hotel as well as options in main­tain­ing lev­els of secu­ri­ty again­st hacks, which are becom­ing preva­lent in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty indus­try as seen with Marriott’s 2018 data breach.

In addi­tion to data secu­ri­ty, man­age­ment can uti­lize CBRS to access their con­trol sys­tems and view how many peo­ple are using a pub­lic room such as the lob­by, pool, or gym. 

Currently, IoT platforms such as Sirqul, can layer their software on DAS and allow users to view a visual representation of guests as colored dots, thus revealing how many are in any given area a building.
Applications such as these allow managers to analyze and predict guest behaviors to offer better
services in the future, and provide guests more information to make better decisions during their stay. 

By view­ing how many peo­ple are using their ser­vices, man­age­ment can adjust staffing needs and select clean­ing times to avoid dis­turbing guests. Man­age­ment can also use CBRS net­works to host a prox­im­i­ty-based app that con­nects with guests to send noti­fi­ca­tions per­tain­ing to their stay, or in rare cas­es, alert them dur­ing an emer­gen­cy. CBRS can fun­da­men­tal­ly change the way pub­lic safe­ty is approached in hotels as the prop­er­ty can help emer­gen­cy respon­ders locate peo­ple dur­ing fires, as one exam­ple.

Guest Expe­ri­ence

CBRS net­works enable hotels to provide guests with sur­pris­ing perks. Hotels are chal­lenged with cater­ing to a grow­ing mil­len­ni­al client base that demands fric­tion­less expe­ri­ences wherever they go, espe­cial­ly on vaca­tion or dur­ing busi­ness trips. When guests arrive in the park­ing lot, they will auto­mat­i­cal­ly be signed onto the net­work, noti­fy­ing the hotel in the process. The guest can then use the hotel’s app to check-in, select and get into their room. Accord­ing to Systemagic’s Hos­pi­tal­i­ty Tech Report, 73% of hotel guests want to avoid the front desk by uti­liz­ing their smart­phones to check-in. CBRS is ide­al for those look­ing for the added ben­e­fits of con­ve­nience, speed, trans­paren­cy and a lev­el of per­son­al­iza­tion dur­ing their stay.

While secu­ri­ty is always a con­cern, 75% of guests are will­ing to share per­son­al infor­ma­tion such as gen­der, email address, and age to access loy­al­ty pro­grams, accord­ing to the above report. Luck­i­ly, the use of CBRS keeps per­son­al infor­ma­tion safe­ly stored sole­ly on the hotel’s net­work.

This emerg­ing wire­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty band is still nascent in adop­tion but is quick­ly receiv­ing atten­tion to sup­port the increas­ing demands hos­pi­tal­i­ty and real estate indus­tries antic­i­pate in the near future for con­nect­ed ser­vices. Com­mer­cial real estate (CRE) is the first to break ground with the poten­tial that CBRS pro­vides their ten­ants, with many devel­op­ments already in the test process. It is like­ly that larg­er hotels will be the first adopters of CBRS in hos­pi­tal­i­ty, as the­se brands are more involved in pro­vid­ing ameni­ties and lux­u­ry guest rooms. At the Hilton hotel, guests can already book their room on the Hilton app as well as check-in/check-out from their room and use their phone as a room key.

Hotels will soon require a new robust wire­less net­work solu­tion to meet the demands of their staff, guests, oper­a­tions, and the Inter­net of Things (IoT). The com­bi­na­tion of DAS and CBRS pro­vides a con­nec­tiv­i­ty solu­tion to offer a whole new lev­el of ser­vice to guests at scale.

About the Author