Bandwidth Management (Hotels)

Introduction

The global competition is everywhere. It is the healthcare services, technology, hospitality industry, and others. Obviously, in the hospitality industry, the people who are usually the visitors are demanding the hotel businesses to have an access in communication. With that, the innovation of the hotels became tight and accessibility on the Internet became extremely high, not only for the business use but also for their clients. In today’s world, there is clear evidence that until now the hospitality firms are trying to meet the demands of the different clients through their continuous innovation and acquisition of new machines.

1.0 Bandwidth is the speed at which the data is transferred and which is also used to refer to the maximum capacity or the fastest that a connection could move the data. In other sense, bandwidth measures the capacity of a medium to transmit the data. Bandwidth can be considered effective if the actual data were transmitted on a connection (SFT, 1996). In hospitality industry, the effective bandwidth can serve the customers connected in the service with the maximum possible speed in a given short time.

2.0 Bandwidth Management involves the use of statistics, when it is applied in businesses. Known as a history, the provider can definitely search and control the limits or determine the ranges of the inventory levels, production rates, backlog, and orders placed by the customers (SFT, 1996). With the use of the bandwidth management, there is recognition on the importance of monitoring, especially on the clients of the hotels where they need fast and accurate information. Bandwidth Management is a general term given to a collection of tools and techniques that an institution can use to reduce demand on critical segments of networks. Bandwidth management can be applied in hotels where the institution connects to the greater internet (Deneen, 2002).

3.0 Setting a limitation on the total usage of bandwidth is a reflection of poor bandwidth. This mostly happens during the peak time and the providers set the limitations to balance between the highest demand they will receive and at the same time keeping the costs low. As impact, customers will suffer slowdowns and sometimes slower that the expected maximum bandwidth. Another indication of poor bandwidth is when the customer travel or transferred in some place or location to achieve the expected maximum speed. The delayed messages are another indication of poor bandwidth and this happens when two or more messages or packets arrived at the same time. At this point, the packets are in queue which is also known as a buffer (SFT, 1996). Poor bandwidth can also threaten the growth of the small business (AFS, 2009)

4.0 When applied to the hospitality industry, the bandwidth management included the techniques such as data compression that is used to reduce the size of the data that must be transmitted. In fact, the hotels can also use the local caching to store the frequently used data locally instead of transmitting it multiple times. In addition, bandwidth prioritization to allocate bandwidth based on the importance of the application. The distributed content, when applied to the hotel service can move content from a single location to multiple locations nearer the end users. Bandwidth management blocked an unauthorized traffic. The Internet accounting packages to track bandwidth usage and charge it back to customers and it can educate users about the consequences of their actions and convince them to be good citizens on the network (Deneen, 2002). The use of bandwidth management system can solve the problem of the slow WiFi services in most of the hotels, especially when it is prioritized by the people who travel to work. Hotels can increase their revenue by charging for the business-grade Internet while at the same time, the clients can enjoy the high-quality of the fast Internet access.

5.0 Providing the service is not that easy since there is an existence of the copyright infringements by guests and the liability of it is usually carried by the hotels as the Internet access provider. There are still basic challenges that the hospitality industry should overcome. The challenge of bandwidth constraints such as security, ability to scale, limited budgets, and its resistance in changes (CIO FOCUS, 2003). There is a threat in the application of the bandwidth in the hospitality industry that mostly involves the issue of technological shortcomings, insufficient bandwidth and accessibility of locations, lack of security protocols, and the target of the project. In this case, the hotels should focus on their market, “what is their market – is it the working professionals or the natural jetsetters?”

6.0 The allocation and the economies of scale of the hotels are clearly diverse. The approach to the bandwidth is practically costly and difficult to manage and scale. But to ensure the efficiency of the service, the hotels should shift to the High Bandwidth that manages to accommodate all type of traffic on a single platform. This means that it is less expensive, easier to manage, and more efficient. In addition, hotels can realize the economies of scale as the number of location and bandwidth needs an increase. The higher bandwidth connections that traditional data communications services because it can be more efficiently distributed across the service provider’s network and consumers can also experience the low-cost efficiency (MegaPath, 2006).

7.0 To meet the specific demands of the clients, the hotels as the service providers can implement the bandwidth management solutions by customizing the amount of bandwidth. Through hardware resources and applied IT skills in network expertise, the network managers can apply the strategies to robust the platform in building the wide variety of Internet access and bandwidth management. Through the new offered technologies, there is a possibility for the upgrades and maintenance. In other way, the hotels should seek the product that allows the users to customize the applied data in all particular types of traffic (IMC, 2005). It is better if there is an applied data that can make all the traffic flows smoothly and uncongested. In terms of monitoring, the amount of bandwidth they applied can also make it easier to reconcile their service performance, histories, resolving troubleshoot problems, and achieve the quality of service.

8.0 The education, training and awareness of the users in the bandwidth can have a positive effect on the bandwidth and its management. There is an increasing demand of the internet connections and most of the users of the access are professionals (Sellner, Hiatt, and Simmons, 2006). Considering that there is an available tool available for the industry, the users can easily cope with the changes because of his awareness in the basic strategies or application of the previous tool.

Conclusion

Based on the condition of the financial crisis and tight challenge in the hospitality industry, there is no doubt that the attempted service to be provided by the hotels is not that easy. It is costly, yet in contrast, highly anticipated by the individuals who want to get connected to their business affairs. The decision is still on the management whether to acquire or not the new technology.

References:

AFS, 2009. Poor Bandwidth Choices Threaten Small Business Growth, American Fiber Systems. [Online] Available at: http://www.americanfibersystems.com/news/poor-bandwidth-choices-threaten-small-business-growth. [Accessed 20 Jan 2010].

CIO FOCUS, 2003. Applied Wireless: Making Wireless Work in Business [Online] Available at: http://www.cio.com/sponsors/CIOFOCUS_WIRELESS_Sybase.pdf. [Accessed 20 Jan 2010].

Deneen, L., 2002. Bandwidth Management Tools, Strategies, and Issues. [Online] Available at: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/DEC0202.pdf. [Accessed 20 Jan 2010].

IMC, 2005. Bandwidth Management Solutions for Service Providers and Enterprise LANs, IMC Networks. [Online] Available at: http://www.imcnetworks.com/adocs/support/to-BWManagement.pdf. [Accessed 20 Jan 2010].

MegaPath, 2006. Choosing a WAN Solution IP VPN vs. Frame Relay or ATM. [Online] Available at: http://www.megapath.com/pdfs/wp_choosing_wan_solution.pdf. [Accessed 20 Jan 2010].

Sellner, B., Hiatt, L., & Simmins, R., 2006. Attaining Situational Awareness for Sliding Autonomy. [Online] Available at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~reids/papers/SIA_HRI06.pdf. [Accessed 20 Jan 2010].

SFT, 1996. What is Bandwidth Management? Stewart~Frazier Tools, Inc. [Online] Available at: http://www.mrp3.com/bndwmgmt.html#what_is. [Accessed 20 Jan 2010].