Cheap travel options, including cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, and cheap vacation packages are encouraging people to travel. Once at their destinations, they are more likely than ever to access the Internet via their tablets.
Over the last nine months (ending March 31th) the number of travelers using laptops in hotels dropped for the first time in history. While hotel guest use of laptops is decreasing, their use of tablets is spiking.
The shifting device mix is posing a challenge for already stressed hotel Wi-Fi. Most hotels created high speed Internet systems built for laptop use and are struggling to handling existing demand for Wi-Fi. Complicating the problem further is that travelers are carrying multiple mobile devices and using them for more than simply email.
Hotel Wi-Fi challenges include:
€ Tablets consume more data than laptops because they are constantly seeking updates in the background, similar to smartphones.
€ Tablets' communications antennae are smaller than laptops which places a larger burden on the individual wireless access points inside a hotel. Guests often encounter more dead spots because their tablets do not pick up the signal as well as laptops do.
€ Future generations of tablets will need even more data to fill their screens, because resolution is continuing to improve, using smaller pixels.
Even hotels that have implemented state of the art Wi-Fi networks within the last two years have found that demand has grown so significantly that they need to make plans to increase their capacity.
Tablets tend to be used for data intensive social networking and video streaming which require ever growing amounts of bandwidth.
The increasing use of tablets on the road and reduced use of laptops impacts hotel Wi-Fi use even more because most tablet users look for external Wi-Fi to get online vs. using their own cellular account.
70 percents of people who purchased iPads last year selected the Wi-Fi only version instead of the more costly, 3G model that requires a monthly Internet plan.
Some of the reasons that travelers are leaving their laptops at home include:
€ Finding that they seldom touch their laptops on trips because their Internet needs can be satisfied with their tablets.
€ Business people are increasingly deciding that their smartphones and tablets are all that are needed to conduct business on the road.
€ Computers are becoming increasingly available in hotel lobby spaces vs. business centers that used to be located in out of the way places.
€ Travelers are migrating over to much more convenient Internet ready devices to carry.
www.cheapfares.com
Over the last nine months (ending March 31th) the number of travelers using laptops in hotels dropped for the first time in history. While hotel guest use of laptops is decreasing, their use of tablets is spiking.
The shifting device mix is posing a challenge for already stressed hotel Wi-Fi. Most hotels created high speed Internet systems built for laptop use and are struggling to handling existing demand for Wi-Fi. Complicating the problem further is that travelers are carrying multiple mobile devices and using them for more than simply email.
Hotel Wi-Fi challenges include:
€ Tablets consume more data than laptops because they are constantly seeking updates in the background, similar to smartphones.
€ Tablets' communications antennae are smaller than laptops which places a larger burden on the individual wireless access points inside a hotel. Guests often encounter more dead spots because their tablets do not pick up the signal as well as laptops do.
€ Future generations of tablets will need even more data to fill their screens, because resolution is continuing to improve, using smaller pixels.
Even hotels that have implemented state of the art Wi-Fi networks within the last two years have found that demand has grown so significantly that they need to make plans to increase their capacity.
Tablets tend to be used for data intensive social networking and video streaming which require ever growing amounts of bandwidth.
The increasing use of tablets on the road and reduced use of laptops impacts hotel Wi-Fi use even more because most tablet users look for external Wi-Fi to get online vs. using their own cellular account.
70 percents of people who purchased iPads last year selected the Wi-Fi only version instead of the more costly, 3G model that requires a monthly Internet plan.
Some of the reasons that travelers are leaving their laptops at home include:
€ Finding that they seldom touch their laptops on trips because their Internet needs can be satisfied with their tablets.
€ Business people are increasingly deciding that their smartphones and tablets are all that are needed to conduct business on the road.
€ Computers are becoming increasingly available in hotel lobby spaces vs. business centers that used to be located in out of the way places.
€ Travelers are migrating over to much more convenient Internet ready devices to carry.
www.cheapfares.com