Book it — STSN has no reservations about hotel connectivity market
STSN specializes in providing broadband Internet connectivity in hotels, linking guests to the Net in their rooms, at conferences and in common areas through either wired or wireless setups.
"What we've done are things we think are very unique," said Michael Z. Jones, the company's senior vice president of sales. "We've been very aggressive in trying to understand the true needs of the business traveler and put a service in place that meets those needs."
STSN started in 1998 with technologies designed to control the environment or otherwise personalize the hotel room setup, but hotels told the company's founders that high-speed Internet was what they wanted. So STSN focused on that, and now the company is in about 1,000 properties in the United States and 900 outside the country and in about 265,000 guest rooms and hotel meeting rooms worldwide.
Marriott was one of the first companies to contract with STSN and now makes up about half of its property portfolio in the United States. Other major chains that have signed on with STSN are Hilton and La Quinta.
STSN common-area wireless connectivity can be found in 690 hotel properties. "Depending on the month you look, we're either No. 3 or No. 4 on the list of hot-spot providers in the world," Jones said.
The company generates revenue either through guest-room use or as a managed-services provider to the property. Conference connectivity is customized, often with STSN working with the hotel sales director to seal a deal for a particular conference.
As for guests, they'll find an easy-to-use, secure connection.
"Our proprietary technology makes it very simple, without loading drivers or any pervasive stuff coming onto their system, to get up and running," he said.
STSN's beginnings were shaped by hotels interested in getting a robust high-speed Internet service. "So the market helped the founders focus on that core competency, then they raised the level of the core competency by agreeing to high levels of standards they wanted deployed. STSN was able to meet and exceed those high standards set by those early partners and achieve a very aggressive rollout," Jones said.
Marriott was an early partner and investor (it still holds a minority equity position), but it has only about half of the STSN portfolio, unlike in the 1998-2001 period when virtually all STSN rooms were in Marriott properties.
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