Blog Post - Historic Connectivity [Published February 2024]

Keeping historic hotels alive with modern connectivity

The value of preserving historical locations can be easier to understand than realize. Fortunately, innovations in technology like fiber and network infrastructure are allowing historic sites and venues to not only survive but prosper, leveraging tools around connectivity.

Whether non-profit or privately owned, historic locations need to attract large concentrations of people to simultaneously serve a cultural function and enjoy economic viability. But centuries-old construction and design can inhibit their modern usefulness. Here’s how technology can help.

Revitalizing the appeal of historic hotels

Because they often possess special cultural and architectural significance in their communities, older hotels offer highly attractive destinations for travelers and event planners. Unfortunately, these structures can be problematic for owners seeking to provide a modern technology experience for their guests and staff.

Reliable WiFi is often the first thing guests complain about at hotels, according to a Hotel Management survey. With older hotels, that challenge is compounded by other factors, including tight corridors, ornately furnished walls, fragile façades, and layouts decentralized from decades of additions and renovations.

Another challenge is ensuring a WiFi network design provides pervasive coverage and answers the demand of a large concentration of devices within one area of the hotel. In the case of a historic hotel, these areas can include a spacious ballroom or grand lobby.

WiFi solutions utilize the careful placement and sensitive location of access points. They also leverage fiber connectivity that delivers enough bandwidth to reach all parts of the hotel and surrounding property.

Older hotels also benefit from managed network solutions that prioritize WiFi traffic and integrates with existing technology environments, including the hotel’s property management system (PMS). With the right provider, a fully integrated WiFi service can be installed in a manner that respects the historic qualities of the hotel while ensuring it meets the standards of today’s traveler.

There are many ways historic hotels can be fitted to accommodate the modern guest without detracting from their original character. TV and entertainment services can be updated to include casting, streaming and a wide range of channel and content choices.

Giving museums a virtual lift

For other enterprises, connecting people to history is more critical to their mission focus. Connectivity has vast potential for museums and other historical sites. It can help bring the benefits of a visit to millions of people without requiring them to leave home. It also offers opportunities to expand and enrich the experience for those who choose to visit in person.

At a museum, an app can be installed on a visitor’s mobile device to serve as a virtual guide. While the visitor walks with earbuds, sensors follow their path and feed relevant audio at specific locations. With some museum apps, visitors are given a selection of journeys from which to choose.

Other connectivity innovations include holograms and augmented reality/virtual reality exhibitions that allow visitors to experience unique angles and enlarged details of items on display.

Museum visitor apps and other immersive technology depend not only on ample bandwidth, but service that keeps the experience seamless by mitigating data lag. Fiber Internet Access prioritizes reliable, symmetrical delivery of connectivity, supported by engineers and technicians 24/7. It is scalable so that bandwidth can be added as needs expand.

The thoughtful development of bandwidth capacity will pay dividends not only by encouraging larger volumes of visitor traffic, but also engaging a broader array of people in the museum’s specific mission.

The virtual portal provider Cuseum explains: “Technology allows museums and historic landmarks to not only engage visitors but also create memorable, immersive experiences that show why preservation is important instead of simply telling. Visitors can connect with rich and diverse historical narratives that bring history to life.”

Revitalizing communications with cloud-based solutions 

Many historic business locations are constrained by the outdated services, aging internal wiring and setups they rely on for basic services like telemetry and television. An infrastructure makeover is needed to keep business tenants productive and profitable; but how can it be done without significant disruption to structural integrity?

Today communications services offer an array of video-rich and mobile-friendly features that work off the cloud rather than physical machinery. They can be installed without wall replacements, room reconfigurations, or other changes to interior or exterior appearance that potentially affect their historic character.

Because they rely solely on existing internet connections, they also can be easily installed utilizing features already in place. Cloud-based unified communications solutions can offer an array of voice and video solutions that include conferencing, mobile access, and instant messaging features.

By leveraging simple connectivity and ease of installation, offices in historic districts can bring their internal and external communications capabilities to today’s standards, without any changes to their character. This helps ensure their preservation remains not only culturally important but economically viable.

Keeping history alive

The challenge of historic preservation is a multifaceted one, which requires flexibility and foresight to ensure alignment with bottom-line concerns. Having a technology partner who respects a focus on preservation in exploring connectivity solutions matters, too.

The Historic Hotels of America, a program run by the National Trust of Historic Preservation, is one organization promoting the expansion of connectivity initiatives. The HHA recently named Spectrum Enterprise an Alliance Partner, offering connectivity-focused technology solutions to over 300 member hotels across the United States.

Learn more about how Spectrum Enterprise can help your enterprise embrace the advantages of historic preservation by exploring a multitude of connectivity solutions with a technology partnership.