What should a hospitality venue ask before choosing an IT provider?

Three beyond the usual: what happens if the point of sale fails at seven on a Friday, whether they know your platform, and how they would separate guest Wi-Fi from your business systems. The generic questions matter; these separate providers for a venue.

The Friday night question is the most revealing single thing you can ask, because the answer contains everything. It tells you their support hours, their escalation arrangement, whether they understand what a failed service costs, and whether they have thought about hospitality at all. An answer about logging a ticket for business hours means the rest of the conversation is academic, however good they are at everything else.

The Wi-Fi question tests whether they understand your specific risk. A good answer involves separate networks with no route between them, and it comes without prompting once they know it is a venue. A provider who does not raise the separation between guest and business networks has not considered the environment, and that is the arrangement most likely to be wrong at your site right now.

Then the boundaries, which cause more friction in hospitality than elsewhere because several suppliers are involved. Who handles the payment terminals, who handles the point of sale platform, who handles the network, and who you call when it is not obvious which one has failed. Get that written down, because a queue at the till while two suppliers discuss whose problem it is, is the specific outcome to avoid. If you would like to ask us those questions, call 1800 456 567.