Mobile Signal Boosting for Hotels & Hospitality
Guests expect their mobile phones to work when they arrive at a hotel.
They may be making calls, receiving messages, authenticating apps, arranging transport or simply trying to stay connected while moving around the building.
Staff also depend on mobile connectivity as they move between reception, offices, bedrooms, meeting rooms, restaurants and back-of-house areas.
But hotels can be particularly difficult buildings for mobile networks.
Thick walls, reinforced concrete, energy-efficient glazing, multiple floors, basement areas and complex internal layouts can all reduce the mobile signal available indoors.
Litenet surveys, designs and installs commercial mobile coverage systems for hotels and hospitality venues throughout the UK.
Why Hotels Can Have Poor Mobile Signal
A hotel may have strong mobile coverage outside while rooms and internal areas have very little usable service.
The building itself is often the reason.
Older hotels may contain thick masonry walls and complicated extensions built at different times. Newer properties can use coated glazing, reinforced concrete and highly insulated construction that reduces the radio signal entering the building.
Once inside, mobile signal then has to travel through floors, walls, corridors and building cores.
This can create very uneven coverage.
Guests may have good service in reception but poor signal in bedrooms. A conference room may work on one network but not another. Basement restaurants, bars or meeting areas may have virtually no coverage at all.
That is why postcode coverage alone tells us very little about the actual guest experience inside the hotel.
Good Wi-Fi Doesn't Replace Mobile Coverage
Hotels quite rightly invest heavily in Wi-Fi.
But Wi-Fi and public mobile coverage solve different problems.
Guests arrive using EE, O2, Vodafone and other mobile services. They may not have joined the hotel Wi-Fi yet, may move between different parts of the property, or may simply expect their normal mobile service to continue working indoors.
Visitors attending meetings, conferences, weddings or events may only be in the property for a few hours and have little reason to connect to the hotel's wireless network.
Staff, contractors and suppliers may also use mobile phones while moving around the site.
Reliable mobile coverage therefore complements good hotel Wi-Fi rather than replacing it.
For the guest, the expectation is much simpler:
their phone should work.
Designed Around the Hotel
There is no standard mobile coverage design for a hotel.
A small country hotel presents a very different RF environment from a large city-centre property, conference hotel or multi-building resort.
The design therefore considers both the radio environment and the practical operation of the property.
That can include donor antenna locations, internal antenna positions, equipment rooms, cable routes and the areas where reliable coverage is most important.
Installation also needs to take account of guests and day-to-day hotel operations.
Where appropriate, work can be planned around room occupancy, events and busy periods to minimise disruption.
For new-build or refurbishment projects, considering mobile coverage earlier can also make equipment locations, antenna positions and cable routes easier to integrate into the finished building.
We Survey Before We Design
Mobile coverage inside a hotel can vary dramatically from floor to floor and even from room to room.
So we measure the actual building.
A professional mobile signal survey allows us to assess the outdoor donor signal, indoor signal strength and quality, the mobile networks and frequencies available and the parts of the property where service becomes weak or unusable.
We also look at how the hotel operates.
Coverage priorities may include:
- bedrooms and corridors
- reception and lobby areas
- restaurants and bars
- conference and meeting rooms
- function spaces
- staff offices
- back-of-house areas
- basement levels
Some hotels may have a particular corporate-network requirement for staff. Others may want broader multi-network coverage because guests can arrive using virtually any UK mobile network.
The system should be designed around the measured requirement.
You don't need to know which mobile signal booster you need. That's our job.
Installation, Testing and Ofcom Compliance
Litenet can manage the complete process from initial diagnosis through to the finished system:
Survey. Design. Installation. Commissioning. Testing. Validation. Support.
After commissioning, we can measure coverage again to confirm that the system has improved the areas it was designed to serve.
This is particularly useful in a hotel, where a simple check at reception tells you very little about what guests are experiencing elsewhere in the property.
Mobile signal repeaters used in the UK also need to meet the relevant requirements for lawful operation.
Ofcom permits certain mobile signal repeaters to operate on a licence-exempt basis provided they meet the relevant technical requirements.
Litenet designs commercial mobile coverage systems around equipment suitable for lawful use in the UK and appropriate for the individual property.
The objective is not simply a more powerful signal.
It is usable, reliable mobile coverage in the parts of the hotel where people actually need it.