ANTlabs enables world-class integrated resort to handle complex large guest network demands [CASE STUDY]

Overview

Tourism in Singapore is a major industry, and its strategic and convenient location also makes it the premier choice for hosting huge events from varying business sectors and industries. Singapore attracted 19.1 million visitors in 2019—that is more than three times its population. Recognizing this strength, one of ANTlabs’ customers who we shall refer to as Integrated Resort & Convention Centre or IRCC in place of its real name, opened with a sprawling 570,000-square-meter waterfront site. It soon became the most sought-after destination for locals, tourists and business visitors through the years.

True to their vision, IRCC aims to seamlessly combine business and leisure into an unparalleled singular destination. This integrated resort features three hotel towers, retail stores, a museum, theatres, restaurants, casino, state-of-the-art MICE facilities, and a convention centre that can host over 45,000 delegates. It has attracted throngs of people all over the world since it opened.

The Challenges

Internet connectivity that is of good quality is now an integral part of the hospitality industry’s service offerings—and guests expect it to be free. With thousands of people going in and out of IRCC’s vicinity daily, it is expected that the Internet access must be able to meet the high demands of their users while adhering to corporate technological standards. This means that a solution that is robust, secure, and scalable is a must. With ANTlabs solutions, IRCC is now able to offer a seamless roaming experience for its guests and visitors, while gaining more insights from the various reports and analytics provided.

Given the size of the integrated resort and the large daily volume of hotel guests and visitors, it is normal to allow more than 30,000 client devices connect to the network daily. There was a need to improve the service quality of IRCC’s access network, and the old system had limited authentication methods and impacted customer satisfaction directly. Enabling seamless roaming across this sprawling large venue was also problematic.

ANTlabs’ high-speed Internet service solution was deployed in 2018 to replace the existing systems and be able to keep up with the increasing demands and volume that IRCC deal with daily.

Extracting revenue streams through its access network was also limited since maintaining the login portals across all sites was not easy. IRCC’s customer marketing department had many ideas, but they also need to balance customer operations organization by having friendly and simple access methods. On top of that, there are new regulatory requirements that require data collection consent from visitors.

The Solution

The key emphasis of ANTlabs solutions was to achieve a balance between user experience (the most important consideration), with the security of access, and additional service revenues. Furthermore, to ensure that there is minimal disruption, a short deployment time was called for, and this was yet another major challenge.

Dealing with Customers’ Current and Future Demands

ANTlabs provided a solution that not only caters for the current needs of customers (i.e. different authentication methods to handle different guest or visitor types, seamless roaming, multi-language support) but also the demands for their future needs in terms of advertising and event campaign management via WiFi services. This means that the ability to easily create and customize portal pages in the way that IRCC marketing and e-commerce teams envisioned and launching these marketing content across multiple zones must be one in a fast and agile manner.

Gaining Insights while Conforming to Regulatory Requirements

To achieve IRCC’s requirements, multiple pairs of ANTlabs SG 4 gateways were deployed swiftly across the property. Private ACS (ANTlabs Cloud Services) was also deployed to support seamless roaming across the resort, monitor network health, and gain insights from analytics. ACS also enabled IRCC’s e-commerce team to create and manage portal pages and add promotional banners expediently. To conform to regulatory requirements for data collection and consent, ACS has built-in forms so users can either their consent for their data to be collected.

ANTlabs worked with IRCC’s different customer business units, and customer services operational departments that provide technical assistance with different level of expertise to guest and visitors. By working closely together with these departments, ANTlabs was able to execute a well-orchestrated migration of users to from the old system to the new with minimal disruptions.

Easy 24/7 Network Monitoring Across Locations

In addition, ANTlabs solution gives an overview of the system health status and provide overall network monitoring capabilities such as capturing logs for backtracking and security investigation. It provides both high resiliency and availability as it is operating in geographically separated secured data centres.

The Results

Better User Experience

Since the deployment of ANTlabs’ solution, guests using IRCC’s access network now experience seamless roaming Internet services from one building to another, and they remain always connected while they are within the integrated resort. Hotel guests and VIPs are also offered higher differentiated bandwidth speeds depending on their loyalty status. IRCC also experienced a reduction of guest complaints due to Internet service disruption, that is made possible by ANTlabs’ high availability solution.

WiFi-enabled Services and Monetization Opportunities

IRCC’s e-commerce and marketing teams can now easily elevate the user experience through festivities-aligned landing pages.  To ensure adherence to branding guidelines, these pages can be refined using the QA workflow system before publishing them. ANTlabs’ single integrated system provides reports and analytics that benefit IRCC’s finance and marketing teams. With the user-approved data gathered through ACS and its reporting capabilities, the finance and marketing teams can make informed decisions backed by insightful data analytics and improve on service offerings by knowing their guests’ preferences.

Easier Monitoring of Network and System Health

ANTlabs’ solution eased the property administrators’ task of monitoring the network and system health. Forecasting growth and planning for future demands are now easier through centralized reports. All these are done while conforming to regulatory requirements for data collection and consent.

Conclusion

With ANTlabs products and solutions, IRCC was able to offer seamless roaming across their property and therefore increasing guest satisfaction with their WiFi connectivity. Their e-commerce team was able to display highly relevant and customized web content across different locations through portal pages while adhering to regulatory requirements for data collection and consent. The single integrated system provides integrated reports and analytics for IRCC’s finance and marketing team, to make informed decisions on improving the guest experience within their property. All these benefits are now possible with the ANTlabs suite of large venue networking and Cloud solution.

About ANTlabs

ANTlabs is a leading technology innovator for guest network technology and services for 20 years. Established in 1999 and based in Singapore, ANTlabs products have been used globally in hotels, airports, telecommunications companies, stadiums, and convention centers.

Media Contacts

ANTlabs Product Department
Tel: +65 6858 6789
Email:   media@antlabs.com
URL: www.antlabs.com