Hotel Wi-Fi: designing for peak occupancy, not the average night.

Guests judge a hotel partly by its Wi-Fi. Complaints cluster at peak times: full occupancy, events and evenings.

Plan for the worst hour

Count devices at full occupancy. A typical guest carries several: a phone, a laptop, a tablet, a streaming stick. Capacity, not just coverage, must meet that demand.

Room and corridor design

Corridor-mounted access points are cheaper but struggle through walls. Per-room or per-pair-of-rooms access points give better signal and capacity. Choose by building construction after a survey.

Public spaces

Lobbies, restaurants, ballrooms and pools need high-density design: more, lower-power access points with careful channel planning, plus enough uplink and internet bandwidth.

Separation

Guest traffic, staff devices, point of sale, CCTV, door locks and building systems belong on separate networks with firewall rules between them.

Seamless experience

One login for the stay, roaming across floors, and casting or in-room entertainment that works without fuss.

Internet capacity

Use multiple links with failover, and manage per-user bandwidth so a few heavy users cannot slow the rest.

Operations

Monitoring with alerts, a support route for the front desk, and a plan for upgrades without disturbing guests.

Payment security

Systems handling cards should follow payment-industry practice and sit on their own network.