+39 02 8718 8553 sales@tanaza.com

Top 7 hotel Wi-Fi hotspot features your facility should have

Top 7 hotel Wi-Fi hotspot features your facility should have

hotel wifi hotspot features
Guest Wi-Fi can turn into a powerful business and marketing tool for hotels. Let’s see what are the main 7 hotel Wi-Fi hotspot features hospitality venues should have to grow their revenues and increase their visibility.

Nowadays, free hotel Wi-Fi is a basic expectation among travellers and a relevant factor when they choose a facility. Furthermore, is not only free guest Wi-Fi a customer amenity but also is a powerful tool that allows facilities to grow their business and increase their visibility and reputation.

Let’s see how Tanaza helps hotels and hospitality venues to boost their revenues, increase their online visibility and meet their guests’ needs, thanks to these 7 must-have hotel Wi-Fi hotspot features.

 

1. Captive portal

 

The captive portal offered by Tanaza provides hoteliers with an easy guest access system. Indeed, different authentication methods for guest Wi-Fi access are available, based on your needs: login through email or phone, coupon or custom code, password, social login, etc. Also, Tanaza makes Wi-Fi access easy not only for hotel guests but also for the staff, as you can configure up to 8 SSIDs per access point. For instance, you can create one SSID for the hotel staff with WPA encrypted password, another SSID with your captive portal for guest access using social login, one SSID for the hall with coupon-based registration and one last SSID for hotel equipment. In this way, by separating traffic, you will guarantee a secure Wi-Fi connection.  

 

2. Web Content Filtering

 

Your hotel guests expect to be provided with a safe and secure browsing experience. Parents want to safeguard their kids while they use your Wi-Fi to browse, in particular. This is why you should control and protect your network by deploying the network content filtering offered by Tanaza, which allows you to block user access to inappropriate or unwanted websites and apps, such as content of pornography, violence, betting sites, etc. Indeed, you can choose what content categories your guests can access while using your hotel Wi-Fi network on their computers, tablets, smartphones, and other Wi-Fi-enabled devices and you can schedule when to block or unblock them. Also, this content filter blocks malware, botnets and other common viruses and can also function as a parental control software tool: in this way, you will further ensure the security of your network, guaranteeing a safe browsing experience for both your guests and staff.

 

3. Login Page Editor

 

You can welcome your guests building a personalised, branded login page before they access your network. Tanaza features a responsive and customizable login page, which gives you the possibility to promote your services, hotel facilities and special offers in a simple and effective way: for instance, you can add banners to advertise your room service or to show your best rooms. You can promote new amenities, new menus at the hotel restaurant or your spa offerings. Also, you can add special deals and discounts on your login page to incentivise your guests to try your services. In addition, you can add widgets to promote your conventions with local tour operators and other business partners by giving suggestions about particular events held near your facility. And it’s not all: you can even insert a TripAdvisor widget on your login page to further promote your hospitality venue. Thanks to the login page offered by Tanaza, you can build you Wi-Fi guest access page in more than 60 languages, included Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian, simplifying your guests’ login process to your Wi-Fi network.


hotel login page
Example of a hotel’s login page

 

4. Analytics dashboard

 

When hotel guests log in into your Wi-Fi network, they provide some personal information, such as name, surname, age, gender, birthday, location, etc. Thanks to the analytics dashboard provided by Tanaza, you can easily collect and analyse user data to run statistics and marketing campaigns. For instance, you can see the number of users connected to your Wi-Fi, the preferred authentication method they chose to access your network, the preferred time at which they logged in. Once collected, you can export and name your list of data in CVS or XLSX to easily access it at your convenience. Furthermore, on the Tanaza Cloud dashboard, you can monitor in real-time the bandwidth usage for every access point of your network, which is a useful information to better control your bandwidth allocation.

 

5. Remember me

 

The “Remember me” Tanaza feature allows you to offer your guests a home-like experience. Indeed, the network remembers users’ devices after their first authentication and reconnect them automatically when they access to Wi-Fi after a while. In this way, guests will not be required to re-enter time-consuming codes or passwords.   

 

6. Social login

 

Among the many authentication methods offered by Tanaza, social login is the ideal solution to enhance the visibility of your facility and improve your brand reputation on social media networks. Indeed, through the social login provided by Tanaza, users access your Wi-Fi using their social networks accounts, such as Facebook. In doing so, you can ask guests to put a “Like” on your Facebook page or to share their position after they have connected to your network, through a Facebook “Check-in”. Thanks to social Wi-Fi and social sharing, more people will hear about and grow their interest towards your hotel. In this way, your web reputation and the number of bookings will grow in a faster way, and you will increase the likelihood to get positive reviews on TripAdvisor.

 

7. MailChimp connector

 

Once you have collected enough user data, you can leverage the MailChimp connector integrated with Tanaza to communicate with your guests in a tailored way. The MailChimp Connector, indeed, allows you to add automatically new email addresses gathered through Wi-Fi to a MailChimp list and send triggered emails and campaigns to your guests. For instance, you can send automatic surveys to guests who stayed at your hotel asking for feedback, to improve your services. Also, you can send customised offers depending on your target: you can promote your spa specifically to couples, the playground of your facility to families, or offer treatments and massages at the beauty centre of your hotel to women, etc.


Last but not least, Tanaza is multi-vendor and supports a broad range of indoor and outdoor access points from different vendors, such as Tp-Link, Ubiquiti, etc. In this way, you have the unique opportunity to choose the access points you prefer for your Wi-Fi deployment, optimizing your costs while, at the same time, relying on a first-rate network. For instance, you can use a Tp-Link or an EnGenius device for outdoor areas, such as the hotel parking area, the garden or the swimming pool, and opt for a Ubiquiti access point for indoor areas, such as the hall or the restaurant. For instance, we suggest opting for the latest Ubiquiti UniFi AC In-Wall for hotel rooms, as it is small, easily deployable and can provide both wireless and wired connectivity.

Need professional devices? Get a Ligowave Infinity

Need professional devices? Get a Ligowave Infinity

Need professional devices? Get a Ligowave Infinity
Ligowave devices of the Infinity series are a new entry in our list of supported devices.

These access points are very small, nice to see, and have an interesting price-quality ratio.
They’re suitable for any indoor deployments, particularly when you’re in need for ceiling- and wall-mountable, PoE devices, with a minimal eye impact.

The supported devices include NFT-1N, NFT-1NAF, NFT-2AC.
While the first two devices run the 802.11n standard, are mono-radio and can be used only for deployments with up to 50 clients indicatively, the newer NFT-2AC is a 1200Mbps AC device, suitable for deployments with 100-150 clients.

If you want to provide your customers with well-working wifi, and reduce the expenses for hardware, get a Ligowave device from an authorized distributor today.

 

Click here to see the full list of compatible devices

Wi-Fi for hotels will be easier, with UniFi AC In-Wall

Wi-Fi for hotels will be easier, with UniFi AC In-Wall

Wi-Fi for hotels will be easier, with UniFi AC In-Wall
Tanaza now supports Ubiquiti UniFi AC In-Wall, a small and easily deployable device, suitable for hotel rooms.

The In-Wall comes with a sleek design and almost “disappears” once installed.
We suggest to install the devices right above the room’s desks, so that the access point can provide wireless connectivity with a good coverage and be used for wired connectivity as well.
Indeed, the UniFi AC In-Wall features an ethernet port, thanks to which users can connect their laptop through a cable.

By empowering this device with Tanaza’s firmware, you will get a full set of features to manage your Wi-Fi network and your social hotspot. Create an SSID for your hosts with the social login or the email authentication, collect data and insights about your clientele to run target marketing campaign. Control all your networks from one single pane of glass and configure each access point easily. 

 

Click here to see the full list of compatible devices

Tanaza’s captive portal: faster than ever before

Tanaza’s captive portal: faster than ever before

Tanaza's captive portal: faster than ever before
Tanaza continuously enhances its software accordingly to customer’s feedback and is now recognized as the best software for cloud management on the market.

After a lot of work and testing, Tanaza is proud to release its 2.14 firmware!
The firmware main novelty is an update of our captive portal technology, that makes our captive portal faster than ever before.

All our test demonstrated that this captive portal is 4.5X faster in comparison to the previous versions and up to 3x faster than other commonly used captive portals.

 

Do you want to make your splash page the fastest ever?

Upgrade your access points to 2.14 today

Tanaza's captive portal: faster than ever before
Also, with the 2.14 release Tanaza announces new supported devices from Ubiquiti (UniFi AC In-Wall), TP-Link (TP-WA901ND v5), and Ligowave (Infinity series, NFT-1N, NFT-1NAF, NFT-2AC).

 

How to deploy an outside Wi-Fi network for camping

How to deploy an outside Wi-Fi network for camping

How to deploy an outside Wi-Fi network for camping

During holidays, campings are invaded by vacationers leaving the big cities to enjoy the sea or the mountains. During the last few years, comfort at camping places increased a lot, and now the biggest majority provides Wi-Fi for their hosts.

 

Wi-Fi is a good solution for campings to engage with guests and encourage them to come back for the next holidays.
The main challenge when deploying a network for camping venues is the weather. You have to think that your hardware needs to resist the wind, sun, powder, and snow while having antennas that can cover long distances and provide internet to lots of concurrent users.


The first step is to determine the needed bandwidth. We can reasonably think that the number of concurrent users is higher in the evenings than during the day and that the level of usage is between medium and heavy (social networks, emails, VoIP calls, and video streaming). So the first thing is to find an ISP or WISP able to provide sufficient bandwidth to your place, at a reasonable price.

 

After calculating the bandwidth, you need to think about the kind of hardware you want to use and how to maximize the signal’s performance.
In a previous article about how to deploy Wi-Fi for summer events, we suggested you use outdoor access points like Ubiquiti ones and in particular the Nanostation, Picostation, or the Rocket’s series. We also recommend the EnGenius outdoor access points. The mentioned devices are outdoor access points that can be easily mounted on poles or trees. Most of them have directional antennas so that by positioning them, you can manage how the signal is spread around the area.

Additional antennas can be used to maximize the WLAN performances they will increase the power of the access point. For example, you can use an antenna AMO-2G10 Ubiquiti together with a Ubiquiti Rocket M2 to make the Wi-Fi signal stronger in a specific area (for example, the open-air restaurant or the swimming pool).

Moreover, Tanaza allows you to keep an eye on each device’s status and to control its configuration, from one single pane of glass. You will be able to remotely manage your Wi-Fi networks from the cloud and to receive alerts via email in case of disconnections, which is extremely important when deploying outdoor networks.

About the hotspot configuration, you can decide whether to protect the Wi-Fi access with a password or to create a login page and select one of the many authentication processes available. We suggest you opt for the second proposition because it’s better from a marketing point of view. In fact, when creating a login page, you can advertise your products and services to your customers and increase their engagement. Select the social login (Facebook, Instagram, and other social media authentication) or the email login to gather information and collect insights about customers. This data can be used then for marketing purposes, like creating a targeted newsletter campaign.

Wi-Fi network for Camping
For example, encourage customers to book now their next holidays in your camping by offering a discount on your login page, promote activities nearby your camping.
Tanaza also features a content filtering tool to keep control on the Wi-Fi usage and block access to inappropriate websites like violence, pornography, betting, etc. This tool also blocks malware internet pages and guarantees safe browsing on the Wi-Fi network.

 

 

To conclude, deploying a Wi-Fi network within a camping implies to select the right hardware for the outdoor deployment, and to keep in mind the number of concurrent users and the coverage needs. A Wi-Fi network brings additional comfort to the camping’s customers, but is also a marketing tool to boost their engagement and generate more revenues.

Related articles:

How to deploy WiFi network for outdoor summer events

Understand the power gain with the Rule of 10s and 3s

https://www.classichotspot.com/blog/how-to-build-a-reliable-wifi-network-for-offices/

5 main advantages of Wi-Fi networks over wired networks

5 main advantages of Wi-Fi networks over wired networks

Wi-Fi networks VS wired

Let’s discuss in this post the main benefits of Wi-Fi networks over wired for small deployments.

Small networks, such as home and small business LANs deployments, can be set up relying on both wireless and wired technology. In this post, we discuss the main reasons why you should consider building your network using the Wi-Fi technology instead of Ethernet.

 

1. Cloud-based Wi-Fi easy setup

 

Firstly, Ethernet cables need to reach all computers to work. Accordingly, it becomes tricky when more computers are required for your deployment and are positioned in different areas, as you might need to pass through walls or under the floor to reach them. On the contrary, Wi-Fi is less time-consuming and easier to setup, especially if you operate your wireless infrastructure in the cloud, like Tanaza. Indeed, cloud-based management allows you to remotely install your access points and configure your network, with no need for an IT expert on-site. Furthermore, the most innovative cloud-based systems, such as Tanaza, are characterised by zero-touch deployment tools, meaning that also the provisioning and the first configuration of your network is performed remotely through the cloud. No matter where you go, thanks to cloud-based Wi-Fi management, you can manage and control your network anywhere, saving a huge amount of time and money.

Read this article to know how to cloud-manage your first Tanaza powered access point.

 

2. Wi-Fi is fast enough

 

Thanks to the new standards, Wi-Fi has become increasingly fast over time, to the point that the difference between Ethernet and Wi-Fi regarding speed is not so relevant anymore. Indeed, the latest WiFi 5, also known as 802.11ac, standard provides a speed of up to 3200 Mbps, making Wi-Fi enough good performing for the majority of tasks. Also, latency is not a big issue either: it is true that with Wi-Fi there is a higher delay when signals travel from a wireless device and a wireless router, but this does not prevent a good performance if you use your network to browse online, stream videos and listen to music. On the other hand, being less affected by latency, Ethernet connections are a better choice for online gaming and VoIP calls.

Read these instructions to discover how Tanaza helps you to remotely improve your Wi-Fi speed.

 

3. Wi-Fi uses encryption to protect data

 

Using Ethernet cables, wired LANs are more secure than wireless. On the other hand, with Wi-Fi data travel in the air, which increases the likelihood that your sent and received data can be intercepted. Nevertheless, nowadays the majority of Wi-Fi networks use encryption to protect data. In particular, WPA2 is currently the most recommended encryption mechanism for Wi-Fi secure connections.   

If you want to know how to protect your SSIDs using WPA2-PSK with Tanaza, click here.

 

4. Wi-Fi is versatile

 

Thanks to Wi-Fi, businesses achieve faster client onboarding: indeed, instead of providing Ethernet cables, it is only necessary to provide a password or to use a system that allows the BYOD policy, like Tanaza. The Tanaza software also allows you to successfully connect to your Wi-Fi network devices with no Ethernet port, such as Es smartphones. Furthermore, Wi-Fi networks allow more user to use the same connection at the same time, remotely, simplifying files access and data sharing and transfer. Tanaza Wi-Fi, for instance, allows an unlimited number of concurrent users to browse online. Also, on the Tanaza Cloud dashboard, you can check the number of people connected to your wireless network anytime. Not to mention that thanks to Wi-Fi, people are free to move around a location and access the network anywhere within coverage range, instead of being constrained in the place where the router is physically located.

Click here to learn how to create a new network in Tanaza Cloud.

 

5. People love Wi-Fi

 

Wi-Fi is the ideal choice for small businesses located in public areas, such as cafes and bars. Indeed, Wi-Fi has become an expected service among people and can be therefore leveraged by businesses to increase their revenues. Furthermore, customers can enjoy wireless internet connection using any type of Wi-Fi-enabled device, including smartphone, tablet, wearables, sensors, etc.

If you are curious to know how to start a business in the Wi-Fi market, read this article.

Discover more about our features


Related articles:

https://www.classichotspot.com/blog/how-cloud-based-wi-fi-management-improves-your-business/

The Pros and Cons of cloud-based software vs on-premise software

https://www.classichotspot.com/blog/3-ways-to-improve-your-wi-fi-network-security/