Case Study: Grantown-on-Spey Caravan Park
The Problem:
The owners of Grantown-on-Spey Caravan Park had invested a considerable amount of money and many years in turning the park into an award winning location in the Highlands of Scotland. The owners, Sandra McKelvie and John Fleming, are very keen to ensure that the park stays at the forefront of people’s minds when they decide where they want to stay on holiday.
With a combination of Touring and Tent pitches and Holiday Homes, they were looking for new ideas and ways in which they could differentiate their park from the others in the area.
Comment:
“We had already decided that the Internet was important to us for the future and had looked at the possibility of putting a couple of PC’s in our reception building for people to use” commented John Fleming, “and then we read an article published in the BHHPA journal about the projects that Park & Marine had been involved in and so we decided to contact them to discuss the potential possibilities”
“Peter Mroch of Park & Marine came to visit us, showed us what we could do, and surveyed the park as well. We had been considering putting in CCTV but had almost dismissed the idea because of the cost of installing cable around the park, Park & Marine then explained that they had a solution for that as well by using the same Wireless network”.
The Solution:
The solution to the Wireless Network at Grantown-on-Spey looked like this. First of all, we installed a Gateway to control and allow access onto the network. This is designed to create a secure environment that helps to manage user accounts, provide access and ensure billing for the service as well. Holiday Home owners and visitors to the park are given access by purchasing a voucher that can be valid for different time periods. Every time a customer logs on to the Wireless Network or when a connection is made to the network, the user is prompted to enter the user name and password, if they don’t then the connection is refused. Security is paramount when considering installing a Wireless Network and a Gateway such as this helps to make the users of the network secure and prevents unauthorised access. Repeaters were then sited on existing buildings and points around the park to repeat the signal and ensure accurate wireless coverage across the whole area.
We then discussed with John Fleming the location of the security camera’s and four Wireless CCTV devices were then installed around the park and connected to a remote PC for monitoring and recording the images from the cameras. We then set up links so that the camera’s could be viewed from anywhere on the internet, providing there was a broadband Internet connection.
Finally:
“From day one we had customers purchasing their tickets for internet access. In the first month we sold five annual tickets! With Skype you can call anyone worldwide for free from your caravan providing the person you are calling is also using Skype which is free. Calls over our network are clearer than land line calls!” comments Sandra McKelvie
“The CCTV cameras are just great. From any location worldwide we can monitor movements on the Caravan Park and clients feel secure and more people want to store their tourer in our storage area. The cameras are mounted on buildings or poles and remain outdoors in all weathers and give consistently clear pictures”.
“Our customers are happy and busy entrepreneurs can take a week-end in their tourer with their laptop and stay in touch with work if needed. The staff are delighted to have this extra perk to offer the visitors and they can closely monitor the site using the CCTV cameras. As owners we are delighted with the professional service offered by Park & Marine. They know what they are doing and they do it well. We have a win-win situation all round”.
