Hotel Kollol is a 4-star hotel, by J&Z Group located in Laboni beach, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh with a magnificent sea view along with a spacious majestic restaurant serving visitors regularly. Hotel Kollol is regarded as one of the leading hotels in terms of guest accommodations, quality, sea view, and restaurants in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.
Being only 10 minutes away from Cox’s Bazar International Airport and the fact that they have excellent customer service puts them on the priority list of tourists visiting Cox’s Bazar. With around 160 rooms and a capacity for up to 600 people, there was a need for a strong networking system as stable and reliable Wi-Fi is a must-have benefit for hotel guests.
Previously, Hotel Kollol had a very complex network system that was difficult to manage and there was no centralized management system, so they needed to handle each router individually. They were using D-Link routers to cover their whole premises. On each floor, they placed multiple primary D-Link routers and many D-Link routers in range extender mode with no mesh support. It caused multiple issues at multiple sections, drops off the network, unstable connection, user disconnections, and difficulty in the management of the whole system. The range was very poor and there was no way for them to create any outdoor network with this system.
To tackle the existing issues and satisfy the hotel’s needs, Excel Technologies Bangladesh devised a plan to resolve core issues that Hotel Kollol was facing to give them an overall smoother and better experience utilizing Grandstream’s GWN Series Wi-Fi Access Points and free management options. Excel Technologies Ltd. is one of the leading IT Companies in Bangladesh and started its journey back in 1999. Excel Technologies Ltd. is the most trusted company because of its excellent after-sale service and warranty policies. With an experience of more than 24 years and 17 excel+service customer support points available throughout Bangladesh.
Being in the Hotel Industry, Hotel Kollol regularly sees waves of visitors coming and going every day. Keeping track of these guests, taking reservations, following up with customers, processing bills during checkout, and many more tasks are heavily dependent on a stable and strong networking system. Many guests were complaining and leaving unsatisfied. Upon close inspection, they found their current Wi-Fi Networking System is a core cause of that. After having a close discussion with the executives at Hotel Kollol, Grandstream’s certified partner in Bangladesh, Excel Technologies, found 5 core networking issues the hotel was facing and came up with a solution to fix these:
Bandwidth Fluctuation: On average, the hotel has between 200 to 250 guests. During peak time this number can go up to 800 people including guests and restaurant visitors, and outside people visiting the hotel park. Even after having 400 Mbps, users were receiving unstable internet speeds. Some guests were getting exceptionally high speeds, however, some were getting no connectivity at all.
Weak Wi-Fi Signal: Hotel Kollol has around 160 rooms. In many rooms, especially the rooms located in the far corner, customers were getting very weak to no signal. Even in the lobby area, users were getting very poor Wi-Fi connectivity resulting in a poor experience. In addition to Wi-Fi connectivity in the indoor areas, Hotel Kollol wanted to expand its current network to the outdoor areas, which they didn’t have.
Continuous Disconnection: Hotel guests were constantly getting disconnected from the internet whilst they were using it and were unable to connect back to it. Additionally, a vast majority of the guests were not able to connect to the internet receiving messages that displayed “connected but no internet”.
Guest Wi-Fi Zone: With a large number of visitors on daily basis, in addition to the guests and hotel staff, the hotel needed a system to easily provide Wi-Fi access while keeping the existing network secure and clutter-free.
Centralized Management System: With a big networking system being planned throughout the hotel’s indoor and outdoor premises, a central hub for managing the network was mandatory for them.
All of Hotel Kollol’s core problems were easily solved by using Grandstream’s Access Points. A total of 160 GWN7660 devices and GWN7602 were used to cater to the indoor areas and hotel rooms, while 4 units of GWN7660LR were placed around the outside areas of the property.
Bandwidth Allocation: While deploying the solution, Excel Bangladesh used Grandstream’s Per IP Bandwidth Fixing technology to distribute the bandwidth amongst all the users and set a bar for the users. Therefore, all hotel guests are now getting similar Wi-Fi speeds and the wastage and fluctuation of bandwidth was no longer present which was a huge issue prior to installing the solution.
Strong Wi-Fi Signal: As the GWN7660 has a 175-meter indoor range for each access point, it became much easier to reach even the furthest corners of any room on any floor. Its 2x2:2 MU-MIMO with DL/UL OFDMA technology helps the users to stay connected and receive stable signals all around the hotel. Wi-Fi roaming helps clients stay connected on every floor of the hotel.
Increased User Capacity: High-user handling capability devices were required as it was evident that their previous Wi-Fi system was not able to handle high user loads. Choosing Wi-Fi 6 compatible devices was important. Each GWN7660 & GWN7660LR has a capacity for 256+ concurrent users meaning the high traffic load is no longer an issue and hundreds of users could stay connected without any potential disconnections. The advanced QoS that the APs had also ensured good real-time performance of low-latency applications.
Creating Multiple Wi-Fi Networks: To do this, Excel Bangladesh distributed the network into three different categories, management, staff, and hotel guests. Previously, Hotel Kollol used a single Wi-Fi network to cater to everyone, which proved to be a problem as the management of the staff network is different from that of the Hotel Guests. The next task was to create a guest network for the users who were staying in the hotel as all the guests coming and going needed a system where guests will remain connected based on their stay time. Using Grandstream’s Captive Portals Authentication Rule system Excel Bangladesh managed to create a network wherein if a guest is staying for 3 days, they get a voucher with a code and portal login and once the 3 days are over they will automatically get disconnected from the network.
Wi-Fi Management: The next-generation cloud management platform, GWN.Cloud offers unlimited AP management. The embedded controller management system has a capacity of 50 APs, so GWN.Cloud was the perfect centralized management system for the large number of APs deployed. The PoE+ feature helped with wire management and any detection of issues that arose. Now with the GWN.Cloud, the networking team can monitor and manage the APs from anywhere using any device at any time, making life a lot easier for them.
The executives at Hotel Kollol are also extremely satisfied with the continuous support and engagement of Grandstream’s Partner, Excel Technologies who helped them through the whole setup and learning phase. Excel Bangladesh also encouraged the staff at Hotel Kollal to contact them at any point in time for any issues which made them very happy, whereas previously Hotel Kollal was left with no after-sales customer service.