WiFi for Event Facilities

Wi-Fi is an emerging and profitable opportunity for event facilities of any size. People now carry Wi-Fi enabled laptops, PDA's and even telephones with the expectation that they can find a Wi-Fi hotspot networks at coffee shops, airports and business districts. This phenomenon isn't limited to technology shows - business people and consumers attending any event are more apt to look for ways to be online while attending shows.

The obvious opportunity is to Wi-Fi enable common access areas off the exhibit floor and partner with a commercial network that aggregates hotspots for consumers, directly handles billing, and shares the revenue with the facility. We have developed "Priority Point" wireless access to provide this capability as an optional feature to any Priority-enabled facility.

An exciting new trend is sponsored entire or partial common area wireless networks or select hot-spots within a center providing free access to attendees. Priority has a unique capability to provide full Wi-Fi coverage of the common areas or very focused sponsored hot-spot areas in a venue with equipment and technology we developed - you can't buy it off-the shelf. This is exactly what the sponsors want, and what exhibition companies want to sell. This fast growing trend that will probably replace sponsored terminal access over the next year or so. And unlike revenue share deals with commercial providers, the revenue from the private hot-spot zones are captured entirely by the exhibition company selling sponsorships, which means the facility has great latitude in fees to set up these services.

Wi-Fi provides both direct and indirect revenue benefits to a facility. Directly the venues benefit from access fees, as well as exhibition management when sponsored common area wireless or hot-spots are offered. Indirectly all vendors benefit when attendees stay within the facility rather than wandering outside the facility for food, coffee and Internet access, for example. When you look at these benefits, there's a strong case for having Wi-Fi - a venue now may appear to be lagging in technology if they don't have it.

A venue would typically look at permanent Wi-Fi installations for often-used common areas and meeting rooms. They would also stock some equipment that can be temporarily placed for special configurations. One advantage Priority venues have is the advanced infrastructure in place that even today allows for temporary deployment based on requests. Priority is unique in that it has developed hardware and software infrastructure that addresses problems faced by venues that you wouldn't find in corporate networks. Another unique ability is 'shaping' coverage to conform to defined portions of common areas as well as confinement to individual rooms.

Wi-Fi is not expensive to deploy based on the benefits and potential sponsorship revenue. Priority works with the venue to make sure the cost of deployment is appropriate to the ability to resell the service and recover the cost quickly. It's not uncommon for sponsored access to recover the cost of deployment with just a few shows. Sponsored common area Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi enabled meeting rooms are the primary Wi-Fi revenue drivers right now.

It easy for attendees to use the network. They just need a Wi-Fi enabled device (a computer, PDA, or cell-phone enabled with Wi-FI), and a web browser. For common area paid access, we've partnered with Boingo, which allows their users access to a large variety of Wi-Fi enabled facilities. Priority venues get added to that network and get reimbursed when those users are online in the venue. Attendees may also purchase connectivity using a credit card or pre-paid wireless cards available at designated locations in the facility.