3 Reasons Outsourced IT Support Is Essential in the Hospitality Industry

What makes the perfect guest experience? Great food and drink? Reasonable prices? Comfy rooms? Service with a smile? Yes to all of the above, but there’s one more — outsourced IT. Allow us to explain.

What is Outsourced IT Support?

Outsourced IT support is the collection of managed IT services through an external partner. That typically includes things like software, IT infrastructure, security, and data storage.

Why Would the Hospitality Sector Need To Outsource IT Support Services?

Many businesses choose IT outsourcing services because they often represent the most cost-effective and reliable way to ensure their IT is always running as it should be. There are also some hospitality-specific reasons.

If you’re a pub, inn, restaurant, or hotel, employing someone to look after your IT wouldn’t make much sense. They would spend most of their time with little to do, whereas an IT outsourcing company can be available as and when you need them.

On a related note, the chances are your hospitality business operates at antisocial hours, and it’s especially expensive to employ someone to be on hand then.

Your guest experience depends a lot on the state of your IT.

How Do Outsourced IT Services Elevate the Guest Experience?

So much of the guest experience involves or relies on digital experiences. IT support outsourcing companies make sure that those experiences meet your guests’ expectations. Here are three reasons outsourced managed IT services can enhance the guest experience:

1. Better Wi-Fi

Free Wi-Fi is just expected now, and 62% of businesses see their customers stay longer when free Wi-Fi is on offer.

In hospitality, you’re likely to have a lot of users on the network at one time, so you need a powerful connection, but sometimes good Wi-Fi takes more than a router. Common hospitality Wi-Fi problems include dead spots, where the signal can’t reach, thick walls in old buildings that block the signal, and (more often than you might think) the building can’t get a Wi-Fi connection at all.

It’s not just the guests using the Wi-Fi either. If you have servers using payment terminals, a bad connection can delay your guests while the staff member has to hold the terminal in the air, waving it around and hoping to pick up the signal. Nobody enjoys those moments.

You need experts to solve problems like that. It takes creativity, experience, and technical skill to find solutions to Wi-Fi problems.

2. IT Security for Hospitality

The more business functions go digital, the more important hospitality cyber security becomes.

The hospitality industry is a favourite for cybercriminals, because businesses use a wide range of systems and technology to infiltrate (think key-cards, Wi-Fi, payment systems, booking systems, security cameras etc.). They have a lot of people passing through, which means many more opportunities to trick someone into letting threats in.

An external IT security expert will be able to assess and continually strengthen your security measures in response to existing and emerging threats.

3. Outsourced IT Partners Keep Your IT Up-to-Date and Safe

You may or may not know that your software has a use-by date. At a certain point, programmes reach an ‘end-of-life’ stage, when the developer of the software no longer supports it with updates. The biggest consequence of that you no longer get security patches on the software, so cyber criminals can easily exploit known weaknesses.

An external expert will keep on top of software lifecycles for you and all of their clients, so they will be anticipating the end-of-life programmes, and proactively planning for their replacements. That means you can rest assured that you have the safest, most efficient and most suitable software for your business.

Want To Know More About Outsourced IT?

Whatever IT challenges you have, we address them. To find out more about the solutions that we offer to the hospitality industry, or how we can help you, please email info@qiversetech.com