Improve guest experience and increase sales 

Like everyone else, hotel guests these days are constantly reachable and online. They make phone calls, use Whatsapp, Instagram and Snappchat, stream their favourite series on Netflix or watch a movie on YouTube. This requires perfect connectivity throughout the hotel. A WiFi connection is far from always optimally secured and has limited bandwidth. However, more and more buildings only allow a limited 4G or 5G signal through. Glass manufacturer AGC offers a solution with WAVETHRU.

"For optimal service to your guests, perfect connectivity throughout the hotel is a must these days," states Cynthia van Vroenhoven, Business Developer WAVETHRU at AGC Glass. "After all, nothing is more annoying than having no coverage in your hotel room. In practice, however, we see that this is the case in more and more buildings. The better insulated a facade is, the greater the challenge of getting the mobile phone signal in. This is due to the 'Faraday cage' effect. The increasingly stringent sustainability requirements and thus the glass chosen - insulating glass, double-glazed, triple-glazed - make the problem more and more urgent." 

While it is true that almost all hotels offer free WiFi these days, this by no means solves the problem. Making phone calls over WiFi is not ideal and public WiFi networks often have limited capacity, making streaming movies or series a challenge. WiFi is also notoriously insecure. Hackers break into it easily. Moreover, it is a cost for a hotel. 

Van Vroenhoven: "4G and 5G connections are optimally secured and usually faster and more stable than WiFi. More and more people nowadays have unlimited data subscriptions and you are doing them a big favour if they can simply make calls and use the internet via their own provider. When, as a hotel, you can offer perfect connectivity to all guests, both with domestic and foreign providers and with their own subscription, you offer them optimal hospitality, service and convenience." 

To provide optimum connectivity in all buildings, glass manufacturer AGC developed WAVETHRU. This is a patented, one-off, durable, treatment of a new or existing glass pane that allows any signal to pass through effortlessly. WAVETHRU can be used on any brand of glass and is maintenance-free. A WAVETHRU technician only needs to be in the building once to treat several panes with a laser. Incidentally, this treatment has no adverse effect on the insulation value or thermal performance of the glass. It is also invisible to the naked eye and costs no energy. "Beforehand, we can determine what the problems of a specific location are via a free quick scan, taking measurements both inside and outside," Van Vroenhoven explains. "A report follows that with a quote. After agreeing on the price, we can move very quickly to have the work done by our teams with a specialised laser robot. For this, we only need one and a half metres of free space from the window. Everyone can just keep working and guests are not disturbed. WAVETHRU is also operator-independent, so it works for all types of mobile phones and providers." 

AGC's WAVETHRU has now been in existence for six years and during that time connectivity has been greatly improved in many premises across the Benelux. "We started in the co-working space market, healthcare, hospitals and flex offices. Now we would like to discover whether WAVETHRU can also be the right solution for the hotel market. For that, I like to meet with hotels. Not least because I have a love for everything to do with hotels and hospitality. I also studied at the hotel school myself. Our quick scan is free of charge and we guarantee the final result." 

Besides improving coverage throughout the hotel, WAVETRHRU also creates a healthier environment. "By treating part of the window with a laser, we open up the window a bit, so to speak," says Van Vroenhoven. "This creates a homogeneous flow of the signal, which is much healthier than keeping radiation within the walls of the building."