Structured Cabling is Driving Service Excellence for the Hospitality Industry in the Middle East

July 4, 2013 - PRLog -- DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Few sectors must lay as much emphasis on customer satisfaction and service excellence as the hospitality industry. In today's age, customer loyalty is hard to come by and being the hotel of choice may well boil down to a good review on a travel website. Reports such as Google’s annual Mobile Planet smartphone study show that the Middle East leads the world in terms of smartphone penetration and usage, which is why it comes as little surprise that providing a high-speed internet service is an essential pre-requisite to customer satisfaction.

Social media is now as much a part of the vacation experience as a sightseeing tour or an authentic local meal. Holiday makers are eager to share real-time updates of their vacation with their near and dear ones. So much so that the SpringHill Suites Annual Travel Survey revealed that an astonishing 57% of guests would not give up social media on vacation in exchange for a 25% hotel discount.

Shibu Vahid, Head of Technical Operations at R&M Middle East, Turkey & Africa says that in a world of increasingly tech-savvy consumers, high speed internet connectivity becomes the link to information that is demanded at a moment’s notice. The technology that supports this is now as much a part of the service equation as a well-trained housekeeping staff. Building the backbone that will not only support the current demands but also generate new opportunities to deliver differentiating services is therefore a must. Once this is understood, the role of structured cabling in the hospitality sector becomes evident.  

A quality cabling infrastructure is the technological foundation of excellent service in a hospitality property. Furthermore, the benefits of a solid structured cabling backbone extend well beyond providing just fast and reliable internet access. It opens up the possibility to incorporate new bandwidth hungry technologies such as IP based phones, digital entertainment and on-demand services and even backend facility management and building management systems. These applications require large amounts of bandwidth to be made available at all locations of the hotel over a very reliable connection. With confidence in the system's ability to scale and accommodate rapid changes and requirements, the hotel can quickly differentiate itself as an early adopter of world-class technologies.

Opening up New Possibilities

A sturdy cabling backbone can facilitate the uptake of a number of user friendly applications. It can pave the way for media rich entertainment services such as IPTV. Property owners can create entirely new ways to engage with customers through social media channels. Meeting rooms can be revamped with state-of-the-art global conferencing facilities and digital signage.

Today, guests are well versed with interactive interfaces having utilized mobile applications to meet a number of their daily requirements. Structured cabling can help extend upon this behaviour, allowing property owners to install self-service kiosks which not only appeal to guests but also reduce the strain on staff during peak operating periods. The latest security and surveillance technologies incumbent on high speed networks can also be easily integrated to reduce the risk of both theft and loss.

Why invest in the best?

Up until high-speed internet services became so widely demanded, cabling in hotels was installed to meet the needs of each individual facility with seldom a thought given to the 'bigger picture'. These cabling components were often selected solely on price with little consideration for the long term utility of the network. The result has been crisscrossing cabling, retrofit technology and layouts which give network planners sleepless nights.

Fortunately, this mentality is changing and structured cabling is now considered as vital to a building as any other utility system such as electrical or water supply. Structured cabling acts as the information transport backbone for all low voltage systems and can address the current and future requirements from numerous end devices. These include communications, entertainment appliances, monitoring and surveillance systems, access control, signage, electronic central clock systems, environmental monitoring and even building management systems.

Unlike office buildings and commercial properties, changes to layout and design in hotels can seldom be performed without a significant impact on the aesthetic appeal and comfort of guests. This makes the process of structured cabling planning and design for this industry a formidable challenge. In a typical hotel, there are multiple facilities such as restaurants, spas, sports facilities, meeting rooms and suites, all of which require different systems to serve the requirements of both guests and staff. Each one of these needs to be taken into account during the building and pre-opening phases. The cabling infrastructure for a hotel, if properly installed, can stand as a valued investment for 15 to 20 years.

Identifying the right cabling vendor and implementation partner who have specialist experience in hospitality projects is vital to ensuring this network longevity. Not only this, a well implemented cabling infrastructure will eliminate the hassles of maintenance and upgrade in the future. We are in an age wherein technology must keep pace with every customer demand. Building the right foundation today could well mean happy customers using your very services to post those glowing online reviews!

About Reichle & De-Massari (R&M)

Reichle & De-Massari AG (R&M, www.rdm.com) develops and manufactures passive cabling solutions for communication networks. With high-quality copper and fiber optic cable products, R&M has gained the reputation of a leader in quality. The company has established its own marketing organizations in 30 countries, grouped into eight sales regions. R&M achieves around two thirds of its sales abroad. Sales in 2012 totaled CHF 183.6 million; EBIT was 0.2% of sales. Every year the company invests 5% of sales in research and development. R&M is one of the 500 largest companies in Switzerland and currently has a workforce of over 700 employees. The company is wholly owned by the Reichle family and is run as an independent family-owned company.

More information is available at http://www.rdm.com

Marketing Contact:

Sandrine Prat

Marketing & Communication Manager

Regional Office- Middle East & Africa

Reichle & De- Massari MEA

PO Box 54281

Dubai Airport Free Zone K09/K10

Dubai U.A.E

Tel: + 971 4 236 87 61

Fax: +971 4 236 87 62

Email: sandrine.prat@rdm.com