Johannesburg, 03 Aug 2017
Businesses in the hospitality industry have to adapt from just providing hotel and guest-based services, to ensure that they offer customers access to technology solutions that keep them connected at all times. Working with Meraki, Westcon-Comstor is delivering hospitality clients solutions that go well beyond the shaky guest WiFi solutions of old, and are instead offering customers the ultimate personalised hospitality experience.
"The days of hotel WiFi being subpar are gone. Your WiFi needs to not only be lightning fast, scalable and easy to access - but it needs to be the premise from which you can develop a fully personalised guest experience," states Louise Taute, Comstor Director at Westcon-Comstor Southern Africa.
"Working with Meraki we are offering hospitality customers with WiFi solutions that go beyond just connectivity. They offer out-of-the-box location analytics to better understand guest behaviour and foot traffic; integrated Bluetooth to seamlessly interface with beacons; a Web-based dashboard to remotely scale and manage your WiFi from a single interface as well as access to the full benefits of the Meraki cloud management suite," she adds.
Location analytics is the perfect way to not only gauge foot traffic, but also enables hoteliers to monitor how much time a guest spends in specific areas of a hotel/property. This could be the gym, the lobby, the bar or their room. This provides hotel management with a view of exactly which areas are the most popular, as well as where promotions should be targeted, and which facilities are being under or over utilised.
By making use of Heat Maps, such as those offered by Meraki, a hotelier can also make better staffing decisions on the fly. A surge in traffic in reception could mean you require additional hands on deck at the front desk as an example.
"Bluetooth beacon technology is also growing in popularity, particularly when it is integrated with third party applications such as wearable devices and even e-wallets. With Meraki's built in Bluetooth capabilities, hospitality customers can leverage solutions such as the Meraki proof-of-concept concierge app," states Taute.
The Meraki for smart hospitality solutions allow for streamlining in-room network access for in-room VOIP, entertainment, lighting, and more. Furthermore, they are also centrally and securely managed from the cloud and boast a feature rich security and unified threat management platform across multiple devices. The Meraki devices can also centrally manage your security cameras, particularly relevant for properties that want to streamline deployment and monitoring of video security systems.
"Ultimately hospitality companies are becoming technology companies. Their services extend further than a good meal and a warm bed in a clean room. They need to offer next-generation experiences, access to ubiquitous WiFi throughout properties and even home-grown applications from which a guest can quickly and intuitively gain access to your services. Which is exactly why we have partnered with Meraki in order to provide customers with technology that can take their business to the next level," ends Taute.
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