Ramada Park Hall Hotel

The challenge

The Ramada Park Hall Wolverhampton Hotel and Spa is a beautiful Grade II listed Georgian Mansion set in seven acres of immaculately kept gardens located in the heart of the West Midlands, boasting 74 luxurious rooms and suites and conferencing facilities for up to 600 delegates.

As guest experience is of the upmost priority for the client, a superfast guest WiFi network was required as the existing network was nearing the end of its lifespan. Guests had begun reporting slowdowns and drop outs on the network, therefore, the hotels trusted IT partner Edge-IT Solutions contacted Performance Networks to conduct a wireless site survey covering their clients Wolverhampton Hotel. A Cisco Meraki solution was in use onsite.

Survey results

Performance Networks used Ekahau WiFi Site Survey/Spectrum Analysis and Wireshark captures to conduct a full WiFi survey to determine what was happening onsite. This then created a full report with an analysis of the existing WiFi network and supporting infrastructure, issues detected along with remedies and recommendations.

Signal Strength was below recommended levels in numerous parts of the hotel. Sub-optimal placement and mounting of WiFi Access Points (APs), which meant the APs weren’t always covering the areas they were meant to. This was shown using coverage maps per AP. The WiFi survey also found there we’re not enough APS to cover the buildings to the latest standards and provide future proofing. The hotel is a mixture of period (Grade II listed) and modern buildings. The period buildings having very thick walls which can impede the WiFi signal and the newer buildings having floors that gave a large amount of signal loss.

The solution

Performance Networks made several recommendations based on the WiFi survey. As the existing equipment was end of life, it couldn’t be reused and incorporated into the future solution. A new WiFi network was required with a new design ensuring all areas of the hotel were covered to specific signal levels which guarantee coverage to even the smallest of devices such as phones and watches. After providing a detailed proposal and most importantly the outcomes of the proposal, Performance Networks were commissioned to provide, design and install the new network.

As part of the solution the hotel benefited from our WiFi Marketing and registration service which captures valuable email and social media details of guests. The service also includes full 7-day support and management of the network, with a guest facing helpline along with full monitoring of the network and APs. Our team provided and managed the complete solution, including additional structured cabling, design and network installation. A post installation WiFi survey was carried out on completion of the works which showed that both the performance and coverage levels of the new network were in line with the design.