Inchture Hotel is a family owned country hotel in the village of Inchture, four miles from Dundee. Owned by husband and wife team Stef and Jack Kelly-Barton since 1999, the hotel is now entering an exciting new phase in its development, thanks to superfast broadband. “The hotel has a superb position by the main road connecting Dundee to Perth. Now they can offer superfast WiFi, they can fully capitalise on the convenient location and target business and conference trade that would otherwise remain in the city.”

Increased bookings from new business trade

"Residential customers, wedding guests and visitors to our restaurant and bar all now enjoy a better overall experience at the hotel"

“For businesses looking to hold meetings or conferences, the availability of superfast WiFi is a must” he adds. “Without it, I am sure we must have lost out on some bookings in the past. Now there is no stopping us. We can compete on a level playing field with all other hotels and conference centres. Since we installed fibre broadband in Spring 2016, our bookings have soared.”

Reliable superfast speeds

Stef says he was delighted to be able to connect to fibre broadband. “We were on an ‘Exchange Only’ line, which meant that our telephone line connected directly to the exchange rather than to a green roadside cabinet. I was worried we may not be able to connect to fibre as I had heard that this created a big engineering challenge. We had been trying for years to improve the speed of our broadband connection, using range extenders and everything else we could think of. With sandstone walls a metre thick, range extenders had only limited impact. So I was really thrilled to hear that a solution had been found for our ‘Exchange Only’ line and we could connect to fibre broadband. We now enjoy a reliable superfast connection of 70 Mbs download and 18 Mbps upload.”

Transforming the customer experience

Stef continues: “It is not only business customers that are more likely to choose Inchture Hotel now we are able to offer superfast WiFi. Residential customers, wedding guests and visitors to our restaurant and bar all now enjoy a better overall experience at the hotel. This makes us more competitive. These days, everyone is used to being on their smart phone or tablet and will often choose their leisure venue based on the quality of its connectivity. In our area, there is poor mobile telephone coverage, so it is even more important to be able to offer superfast broadband. It has been really transformational for the hotel.”

Increasing productivity

Stef and Jack are also enjoying saving valuable time on everyday business operations. Stef says: “It is amazing. Quite simply, everything is quicker and easier. The time saving is enabling us to be more productive and also means that we avoid the constant annoyance of having to wait for everything to happen. For example, we regularly need to send large files to our website company in London. This can now happen almost instantly, whereas previously it sometimes took hours.

A catalyst for business growth

“Now that it is so fast to upload files, this also opens up brand new opportunities for online promotion. We can now make more use of video on our website and social media and it will be easier to find time to update our posts more frequently. This will make a difference to how effectively we can reach out to new customers as well as help us consolidate the loyalty of existing customers, keeping the hotel top of mind. Again, I have no doubt this will lead directly to business growth.”

Stef concludes: “Superfast broadband has already proven itself as a catalyst for business growth at our hotel. It is radically improving the customer experience we can provide and that is helping us achieve a significantly higher level of trade. As we exploit the potential of the technology still further in future, I am looking forward to exploring exciting new opportunities and building still further on this success.”