If you’re a hotel/motel owner or General Manager, what is the most important aspect of your job? Is it having all your rooms filled at all times? That certainly would be great. Is it guest satisfaction? That’s probably the biggest, right? Everyone in the hospitality industry wants happy guests. Happy guests usually means repeat guests.

If you’re a prospective guest, what are the offerings that are most important to you? I know when I travel to a place I’ve never been, I go to travel websites to read about the experiences of previous guests. Cleanliness, staff courtesy, proximity to good restaurants and of course, the beach, are all critical aspects for me. One of the other big things I look for is WiFi. If a place doesn’t have good WiFi, it takes a step down on my list.

Here’s an example.

I was just on vacation with my wife, kids, parents, sisters, etc. I didn’t choose where we stayed so I didn’t do any homework on it. When we got there, I was shocked to find out that they did not offer WiFi. It’s not that it had a cost associated with it or that it was spotty in certain rooms. They did not offer it. Was I in a time warp?

There are a couple of things that I look at every day, whether I’m on vacation or not. I love baseball and can’t go a day without checking the scores, the stories, the highlights. I check the current events, the weather, the fishing reports. And there’s that whole work thing that never stops. The bottom line here is that I check my phone or laptop when I’m on vacation. By Tuesday of my week long vacation, I got a report from my wireless provider that I had used up 25% of my data. And I was only checking my phone a few times a day.

I was disappointed that my family hadn’t checked this out when they chose the place. I was more disappointed that the place didn’t offer WiFi. They had other amazing amenities but I can’t recommend the place to friends or family due to the WiFi. If it had rained, we would’ve been forced inside. There were five kids in total, ranging in age from 3 to 18. You think they require a lot of bandwidth? Now imagine that these kids were trapped inside for the day. Yikes.

Now let’s get back to that customer satisfaction. If hotel guests are happy, a few things can and usually will happen. They’ll be more likely to come back to the same place for their next trip. They’ll tell their friends about the good experience they had. They’ll be less likely to write poor reviews on travel sites. They might even write glowing reviews, which could lead to other new guests and other repeat customers. If I’m a hotel/motel owner or GM, I’m working pretty hard to get those great reviews.

So if you’re in the South Jersey area and you own or run a hotel, motel, inn, bed and breakfast, or any other place in the hospitality industry, we should talk. We provide WiFi service and we’ve gotten some pretty good reviews from our happy customers. We can make sure that you have happy WiFi users and you can focus on the other things they need. Go to www.steelmancollc.com or call 609.645.0200 for more info. Or you can call or email me directly at matt.edwards@steelmancollc.com, 201.988.2660. I’ll tell you all about our happy customers when you call. We can even talk about baseball.