The Cliff Hotel
The Cliff Hotel led the way in broadband adoption when the Penzance telephone exchange became enabled in March 2002 and took advantage of the actnow broadband rebate. Within the same year Simon had researched and installed a bespoke webcam and WiFi. Simon was overwhelmed by the response to this technology: “I knew it would be popular but I never realised just how popular!”
By 2004 the original camera had been upgraded to include a state of the art lens including a zoom facility, with a second camera and server added to cope with the now heavy demand. The Cliff Hotel website link was proving to be a particular hit with Japanese webcam fans as well as users from as far away as New York, Honolulu and Australia.
As it stands at the moment traffic to the Cliff Hotel website is massive and the webcams are receiving around 16,000 visitors per month, serving around 3000 images per hour to people in over 100 countries around the world. Simon adds: “One of the cameras is even used by train operating companies such as Virgin & Southwest trains to check that their trains are running on time!”
As well as encouraging people to visit Cornwall by showing them the fantastic views from the webcams, Simon is also utilising technology in order to improve services for visitors staying at the hotel. Simon says: “We have been offering free secure wireless broadband access to guests for a while. It has been very popular and it’s often the first thing people ask for when they get here – it seems that not offering the facility is now a bit of a deal breaker”. The Cliff Hotel also provides a PC in one of the the lounges for guests who do not have their own laptops.
To cater to demand and keep ahead of the competition the Cliff Hotel is currently undergoing a redevelopment to install Cat5 cable into each room which Simon is hoping will open the door to fully utilising broadband technology. The idea behind installing the cabling to each room in the hotel will be to offer broadband access as well as applications such as VoIP internet telephony in each room. Simon says "The Langham Hilton in Hong Kong has installed VoIP phones, which have a web browser 'front end' and can be used to provide radio in any language streamed from the Internet"
According to Simon: “The hotel industry has been traditionally known to charge extortionate prices for guests to make phone calls as it has always been expensive to install switchboards and landlines in each room. Nowadays, having broadband in each room offers people the opportunity for people to surf the web, make free phone calls using VoIP technology and opens the door for future applications such as IP TV.”
Simon concludes "Most businesses in Cornwall are not utlilising their broadband connections as much as they could. It's OK surfing the web and using email, but there are so many more possibilities with broadband. It's an answer looking for a question."
