The Diamond standard for hotel guest Wi-Fi

Diamond Lodge Hotel in Manchester offers premiere rooms at competitive prices at a convenient location on the city’s A57 Hyde Road, adjacent to the infamous Belle Vue greyhound racing track, and all with free Wi-Fi access for guests
After several years as Comcare customers, the hotel’s owners asked for our help to upgrade the hardware that powers their free guest Wi-Fi, in particular to meet the demands of modern streaming services like BBC iPlayer, Sky Go and Netflix.
In recent years, a growing number of guests connect to the hotel’s Wi-Fi not only with one device like a work laptop, but also from their smartphones and tablets, and the existing infrastructure could no longer cope with this level of demand.
Comcare’s engineers visited the hotel in person to take a look at the pre-existing setup and identify any data bottlenecks – starting with the outgoing internet connection itself, which was a conventional ADSL2 broadband connection not suitable to serve an 80-room hotel.
We recommended a dedicated leased line using the services available in the local area, to provide sufficient bandwidth going into the hotel for all of the guests’ data usage demands.
Knowing there was sufficient bandwidth available, we then surveyed the entire site for any Wi-Fi black spots, and found several areas where the signal strength was adversely affected by environmental conditions like thick walls or distance from the router.
Extra wireless access points were installed to relay the Wi-Fi signal and ensure good coverage throughout the hotel – important not only for those guests staying in that part of the building, but also for anyone moving through the corridors while making use of the wireless internet.
Finally, we put together an upgrade package within the hotel’s available budget for the project, to replace the outdated Guest Gateway and access points with new hardware better suited to the job.
With everything planned and agreed upon, we were able to arrange the installation of the leased line on behalf of the hotel owners – this did not require the old ADSL2 connection to be switched off until the new Wi-Fi access was ready, keeping internet downtime to just five minutes in total when the switchover was made.
New cabling was needed for the extra access points, and this was installed at a convenient time to minimise disruption to guests – and as those areas of the hotel were previously black spots for the wireless signal, again there was minimal negative impact on internet availability during the work, with significant improvement afterwards.
The new hardware, including the access points and Guest Gateway, was all preconfigured at Comcare’s offices before delivery, allowing it to be installed the following day with minimal disruption, and to be switched on and fully operational as quickly as possible once on-site.
Diamond Lodge Hotel’s owners said: “Comcare carried out all the pre-planning and site surveys on our behalf without any disruption to our business. They also liaised with our leased line provider to find the best and most cost-effective solution and made all of the arrangements for the installation.
“Once the final proposal was agreed, the work was carried out in a timely and efficient manner and within budget. The hotel did not suffer any downtime or interruption to our business. A job well done, I would not hesitate to recommend Comcare.”
Diamond Lodge Hotel was left with genuinely super-fast internet access for guests to access wirelessly as part of their room package.
Guests get free Wi-Fi to all compatible devices throughout the premises, without any dropped signals or wireless black spots, and the hotel’s owners have hardware they know they can rely on too, with continued support from Comcare if they need us again in the future.