STAMFORD, CT—One of the common refrains in the hospitality industry is that guests want a more home-like experience. And when it comes to WiFi, the most home-like experience you can have is none at all. Once you enter in a WiFi password the first time, your device automatically finds and connects to your network every time you turn it on or enter your house with it—which is exactly what Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc., is testing out in its hotels.
Starwood partnered with Eleven to test out Passpoint technology in more than a dozen of its hotels. The ElevenOS platform integrates with network hardware and leverages the Wi-Fi Alliance Passpoint HotSpot 2.0 specification to deliver once-in-a-lifetime authentication and fully encrypted connectivity for the guest WiFi experience, eliminating the need for a portal page. Eric Sullender, Eleven’s VP of products, explained, “The way the pilot works is that we work with the existing network operator to overlay a HotSpot 2.0 network in the hotel. Nothing changes for the average guest. The network remains as it was except for the addition of this separate network segment that can support HotSpot 2.0 users. It could be invisible until the hotel is ready and then they enable it and it’s there ready to accept members who have opted into the program when they show up on the property.” The configuration takes less than an hour to complete.
SPG members in select hotels can opt into the pilot program on a variety of devices.
For this pilot, Eleven integrated with the Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) loyalty program. “That allows for SPG members to enter their SPG credentials so it’s a single sign on integration where they enter their SPG credentials on the Starwood site and our software will deliver a HotSpot 2.0 profile to the device. When they show up and the profile has been installed, the device will automatically recognize and seamlessly connect in the background on the WiFi securely, getting them on the internet with no other action required on their part. It’s a configuration built into most of the existing modern wireless network hardware out there, so we tested it in the pilot with Ruckus and Cisco wireless environments.”
Brennan Gildersleeve, Starwood’s VP of brand and guest technology, noted that the company is committed to finding ways to eliminate hardships for guests. “Internet in hotels has always been a pain point,” he said. “Even though WiFi is easier than wired because you don’t have to plug in or find a cable, there’s still the same old pain points: It’s hard to connect, it’s hard to figure out the right networks—sometimes you’ll show up at a hotel and see 50 different networks to connect to and you don’t know which one you’re supposed to use. Assuming you do connect to the right network, having to connect over and over again during your stay is a pain point in a lot of hotels for guests. Some guests are also concerned about security.”
Gildersleeve said Starwood partnered with Eleven for this proof of concept project to begin having conversations on how to fix this. “We really want to figure out a way to create a simplified, awesome WiFi experience for our guests,” he said, noting that for this proof of concept, Starwood focused on its SPG members. “We’re leveraging Passpoint technology to take away all of the pain points we talked about, to create an automatic, seamless, effortless connection—walk into the hotel and you don’t even have to pull your device out of your pocket,” he said. “It will connect to the right WiFi, it’ll be the fastest WiFi and you won’t have to connect multiple times during your stay.”
Currently in 13 hotels, with one more on the way, Starwood intentionally kept the number of hotels small. Properties were chosen based on a number of factors. “We have a great mix of primarily city-center hotels with business travelers that we thought this would appeal to most, and some of our larger hotels as well; we’re in the Sheraton Boston and the Westin Peachtree in Atlanta, for example,” he said. An excellent IT team was also a factor. “When we do a tech pilot, we usually want to use hotels we know can execute and can help us really test it out and provide feedback.”
Two months into the pilot with a couple more to go, Gildersleeve said the feedback has been great, especially given that Starwood hasn’t chosen to promote or market this capability, since the number of hotels is so small. “We’re only promoting it to the guests staying in the hotels,” he said. This is being done in two ways—by email and word of mouth. “If you booked a reservation at one of these 13 hotels you’ll get that obligatory pre-stay email we send and there will be a blurb in there that talks about this. That’s pretty passive. We’re getting some pickup from that, but we didn’t expect that would be a huge marketing channel. Really it’s happening right at the hotel—take the Westin Peachtree. They’ll see a WiFi network that says Westin, but then they’ll also see a WiFi network that says SPG or SPG Passpoint. They won’t be able to connect because it’s secure and unique, so they’ll ask the hotel what this is and the hotel will explain the program. We’re getting a lot of pickup from guests noticing it and asking how can I take part in it.
Brennan Gildersleeve
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide
“We’re seeing about 30 guests a day are using it in each of these hotels. It’s not every guest and it’s not designed to be every guest. It’s a nice sample size of guests who are testing this out,” continued Gildersleeve, noting that some properties have had more than 50 guests a day trying it out. “For something with little fanfare or marketing, we’ve had great pickup—over 1,000 unique guests or unique devices connect to this program. We’ve had over 2,000 SPG members sign up for it and this is in the short two months we’ve been live. It’s been really fun.”
And while Starwood hasn’t yet solicited feedback from guests who opted in, it has received feedback through other means. “We’ve heard through different channels that they love it: ‘It’s about time,’ ‘This is awesome’—some cool feedback on our guest experience survey we send out and even flyer talk in other channels,” said Gildersleeve. “Different SPG members commented that this is a great initiative; someone said, ‘I’d longed for this type of internet benefit, and if I’m not a guest I can still go to the restaurant and connect to WiFi.’ Another member said the new Starwood internet program was ‘terrific,’ which was feedback to the hotel directly.”
Sullender noted that while Starwood chose to give all SPG members who opt in the premium tier of speed at each hotel, “We do have the option and ability to make it much more complex than that if needed.” By tying it to the loyalty program, companies also have the option of using WiFi to create rewards for loyal guests—such as free WiFi or upgrades and enhanced performance.
Gildersleeve was enthusiastic about the experience for the hotel itself. “What’s been great about it is how it’s had almost no impact to our hotel associates in a negative way. We were concerned that if we rolled it out in a large way, you have to go to each one of these WiFi networks and add a configuration to the network to make this work. Part of this proof of concept is to test the set-up process. Is it hard to set up at a hotel? Does it cause any problems to the rest of the WiFi network?” asked Gildersleeve. “There’s been no adverse effect of adding this configuration layer to the existing network. There haven’t been any issues either. Once you set it up, it just works. It’s just another choice for guests to connect to if they have this special profile that they’ve signed up for. We were wondering if our associates would get bogged down with questions or if there’s going to be troubleshooting or guests saying it’s not working for me or adding yet another layer of burden for our associates and there hasn’t been. It’s one of the great takeaways from this proof of concept: It’s worked really well at the property level.”
Gildersleeve noted that Starwood is still in the exploration process. “We’re not 100% sure if ultimately this is the perfect technology to deliver this seamless WiFi experience. There are other approaches we could take and we’re going to investigate, but we wanted to get started. Starwood felt very strongly—let’s start testing ways to solve this pain point once and for all. Whether it’s this exact way of doing it or if we evolve over the coming months, the point of doing these proofs of concept is you get real-life feedback from not only guests but hotel associates and technology partners like Eleven. Ultimately, we’ll figure it out and roll whatever the end solution is out to every hotel. From a hotelier perspective, this is all we focus on. WiFi is such a big deal in our hotels and it’s always about how we make it better for our guests because we know it is a top amenity that guests care about when they stay in our hotels.
“We want to redefine the way the guest connects. We want a seamless, automatic connection for WiFi, especially for our SPG members. This is one initiative we are re very seriously testing to see if we can make that vision a reality,” he concluded. HB
