The Hotel needed a system that could integrate in to the existing front of house system to allow guests to authenticate by name and room number. After looking at various competitive offerings, the WiFi SPARK designed “SPARK Appliance” was deemed as the most suitable to fulfil their requirements..
Profile
The runnymede-on-thames 4 star hotel in Egham, Surrey is situated on the banks of the River Thames near Windsor, just minutes from Heathrow Airport. Its location makes it an ideal venue for meetings, weddings and short breaks.
As well as the hotel and restaurant, conferences and meetings are a vital part of the business so keeping up with technological enhancements such as WiFi, large plasma screens, drop-down projector screens plus smart boards is a necessity as opposed to a luxury.
The Requirement
The Runnymede required a fully bespoke WiFi internet access system for guests and visitors, one which they had total control over. The Hotel needed a system that could integrate in to the existing front of house system to allow guests to authenticate by name and room number. A busy hotel such as this also required control of the bandwidth each user was provided as well as giving priority to conferences and VIP guests. All of this on top of a reliable and hotel wide WiFi access point network.
Solution
After looking at various competitive offerings, the WiFi SPARK designed “SPARK Appliance” was deemed as the most suitable to fulfil their requirements. This provided the hotel full control of the captive portal, subscribers and reporting.
Some bespoke development work was required by our in-house software development team to then integrate the system into the Property Management System (PMS). Advice was provided for access points and internet connectivity and the system was deployed for guests, visitors and conference attendees with great success.
Functionality
The implementation was fairly typical of most ‘high end’ WiFi networks but the added flexibility of the SPARK Appliance meant that the exact functionality requirements of the Hotel could be met, rather than a close approximation. SPARK was tailored to meet the initial and future needs of the PMS and the net result was that guests receive a reliable WiFi access based on username / password or voucher login. For conferences a single username may be created that allows multiple simultaneous logins.
Conclusion
The SPARK system has provided the Runnymede with a state of the art WiFi management system. Guests benefit from a bandwidth controlled, filtered and reliable internet service that is well suited for large conferences as it is for individual guests. WiFi SPARK has an excellent relationship with the Runnymede and its sister hotel The Athenaeum (where SPARK is also installed)
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