Hospitality sector

IT for Hospitality: Wi-Fi, Networks and Video Surveillance

In a hotel, IT is part of the guest experience. Wi-Fi that fails in the room ends up in the online review the following day; a PMS — the system that manages reservations and billing — being down halts check-in during peak hours; a camera that failed to record turns a minor incident into a serious problem. DataRoad installs and maintains the technological infrastructure of hotel units in Lisbon and across the country.

Why can’t the hotel industry be run like an office?

An office has one type of user, fixed opening hours and a single network. A hotel has guests who change every day, staff working in shifts, billing systems that cannot be shut down and cameras recording non-stop — all within the same building and often using the same cabling.

What we do in a hotel

Density, not coverage

The usual question is, “Does the signal reach room 214?”. The right question is, “How many devices will be connected on that floor at 10 pm?” A 60-room hotel easily has 200 devices connected at the same time — mobile phones, laptops, televisions and tablets.

Sizing based on coverage results in a nice-looking map but dissatisfied guests. Sizing based on density requires more access points but solves the problem once and for all.

Structured cabling in hotels: what goes inside the walls

In a hotel, cabling is the only part of the infrastructure that is not replaced later. Access points can be replaced in a morning, a switch can be swapped out in an afternoon—but the cable running inside the bedroom wall stays there for twenty years. That is why the cabling decision is the most expensive one to get wrong and the cheapest one to get right.

One network point per room is not enough

The account that usually fails is this one: a modern hotel needs a network connection for the corridor access point, the bedroom television, the electronic door lock, the thermostat and the telephone. When cabling is done with only Wi-Fi in mind, two years later ceilings are ripped open again to run what was missed.

• Rooms — outlets for TV, IP telephone and home automation, as well as the corridor access point.
• Common areas - lobby, restaurant, terrace and meeting rooms, with density calculated by occupancy rather than square metres.
• Back-office - reception, housekeeping, stores and the back-of-house where it all ends.
• Security — cameras and access control on the same infrastructure, on a separate VLAN.

When CAT6A is justified, and speed isn't the reason

We installed CAT6 and CAT6A structured cabling. In the hotel industry, choosing CAT6A — the cable category above CAT6 — is rarely about the 10 Gbps: it is about PoE, the electrical power that runs through the network cable itself. Wi-Fi 7 access points and modern cameras draw power via the cable, and CAT6A dissipates heat better in a bundle of dozens of cables inside the same cable tray.

A hot cable loses throughput before throwing an error: the type of fault no-one diagnoses and everyone feels. If you're deciding the category, we're writing a Guide to CAT5e, CAT6 and CAT6A.

Building work with a full hotel

We rarely wire an empty hotel. We work floor by floor and wing by wing, with the cable runs prepared during off-peak hours so that no room is out of service for more than a single morning. Reception and the PMS never stop — they are the first to be migrated and the last to be touched.

Certification is what separates a work from a promise

Every installed point is certified using Fluke equipment and handed over with a point-to-point report. Without certification, a network problem the following year is an argument without a referee: it could be the cable, it could be the switch, it could be the access point. With the report in hand, you know for sure. We explained why at why certifying the network is not optional.

Hotel cabling projects

• LX Arch Hotel, Rua Augusta - full installation, Wi-Fi 7, CCTV and IT management.
• Nicola Rossio Hotel — network, Wi-Fi, firewall and IT Unlimited.
• Hotel Wi-Fi — the network that guests praise and the one that manages the hotel.

Wireless networks in hotels: the evaluation starts with the guestroom Wi-Fi

Access point per room or per corridor — and why it is not the same calculation

The choice between putting an access point inside every bedroom or serving multiple bedrooms from the corridor is not a matter of budget: it is a matter of construction. Concrete walls, metal doors and bathrooms in the path of the signal decide for you.

We measure on site before deciding, and then we cable accordingly — because changing your mind after the walls are closed costs another build. We install enterprise wireless networks with PoE-powered access points from the floor cabinet, managed centrally.

Suites, event rooms and terraces call for different things

An event room with two hundred people connected at the same time is a density problem that no corridor coverage can solve. A terrace is an outdoor problem, with equipment specifically designed for that.

A suites floor is a roaming issue so that the guest's call doesn't drop between the room and the lift. We size each zone by the number of anticipated devices, and the generation of Wi-Fi to use get out of this account, not the catalogue.

The guest network cannot see the operation

Every day, dozens of devices enter the hotel that nobody controls. The guest network must be isolated from the PMS, the point of sale (POS) terminals, video surveillance, and staff equipment — and guests must be isolated from one another within the guest network itself. We configure the access portal, usage limits per session, and monitoring that shows, before a complaint reaches reception, that a floor is without coverage.

Wireless network projects in the hospitality industry

No LX Arch Hotel, on Rua Augusta, guest Wi-Fi 7 was included in the same project as the structured network and the firewall, ready on opening day. Ouro Rossio Hotel We installed 30 Wi-Fi access points alongside the 55 cameras and the firewall. We also wrote about Wi-Fi for hotels and the separation of guest and operational networks and about wireless networks for hotels in Lisbon.

CCTV in hotels: the footage the morning after demands

A hotel is a building through which dozens of people pass every day whom no one knows, with access to corridors, lifts, parking and communal areas at any time.

When something goes wrong — missing luggage, damage to a room, an argument outside a bar, a bump in the park — the difference between resolving the matter in ten minutes and dragging it out for weeks depends on whether or not there is usable footage of the right moment. That is why we install professional CCTV at the same time we installed the network: the cameras depend on it.

Start with the objective, not the number of cameras

To deter someone, identify someone, verify a process or constitute evidence are different objectives and result in different projects. A panoramic camera that covers the entire lobby is useful for knowing that there was movement; it is not useful for saying who it was.

In a hotel unit, the points that almost always require identification are the main entrance, reception, floor access points and the car park exit — and it is these that need facial-level framing, paying attention to the backlight of glass facades. The rest of the building is taken care of with transitional coverage. Two well-aimed cameras at the entrances are worth more than ten filming empty space.

Where the law says no

Hotel CCTV monitoring involves the processing of personal data, and there are lines that must not be crossed: guest rooms, bathrooms, changing rooms, and staff rest areas are excluded, and the recording must not extend to public thoroughfares.

Add visible signage before each monitored area, a defined and effectively implemented retention period, a log of who viewed which images and the proper information given to employees — the purpose cannot be to monitor the performance of those who work there. We handle this at the design stage and deliver the compliance dossier with the system, not after someone complains.

The cameras live on the hotel network

An IP camera is a computer connected to your network and powered by the cable itself. From this, two decisions are made while still in the phase of structured cablingthe switches must have a PoE power budget for all cameras — adding cameras to a switch without headroom causes random reboots that no one can diagnose later — and the CCTV has to be on separate network of the guests, the PMS and the POS.

Video traffic is continuous and heavy, and video surveillance equipment has historically been among the least updated. On a flat network, a compromised camera is an open door to the billing system.

How many days do you need to be able to go back

The question that sizes the recorder is not how many cameras it has: it is how many days you need to be able to go back. That answer, multiplied by the number of cameras and the image quality, gives the necessary storage — and this is where most systems fall short, deleting precisely the period you were interested in.

We install NVR recorders with encrypted storage, configured retention and backup of critical footage, with remote access on mobile and computer via user profiles: management does not see the same as reception, and a log is kept of who viewed what.

CCTV projects in the hospitality sector

No Hotel Ouro Rossio, in Lisbon, we installed 55 cameras with continuous recording alongside 30 Wi-Fi access points and a firewall, covering entrances, corridors, reception, parking and outdoor areas. In LX Arch Hotel, on Rua Augusta, video surveillance was integrated into the same project as the structured cabling, guest Wi-Fi 7 and the firewall, all operating on opening day and under continuous management ever since.

If you want to understand the decisions before requesting a quote, our guide on IP video surveillance project for businesses explain what determines whether the images will be of any use.

How we work in a live environment

Real-life cases

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Other sectors we monitor

• Clinical and Healthcare IT
• IT for Offices and Multinationals
• IT for the Public Sector
• IT for Embassies and International Organisations
• Computing for Schools, Colleges and Universities