Crystal Towers Hotel & Spa: Up to speed | The Planner

The African Pride Crystal Towers Hotel & Spa in Cape Town, which boasts the city’s second largest conference centre after the CTICC, is going live with 50Mbps of pure fibre bandwidth on 17 July 2013.

The hotel is partnering with Century City Connect, the provider of an open-access fibre optic network that offers first-world connectivity for the supply of broadband, voice and multimedia services. Century City Connect allows blue-chip Internet Service Providers to provide high-speed, next-generation broadband services to people living and working in Century City. The network is carrier neutral and is believed to be the first of its kind on the African continent.

What this means in plain language is that the superior deluxe African Pride Crystal Towers Hotel & Spa will have what is arguably the fastest hotel Wi-Fi connectivity in South Africa, and faster than the internet speed offered by many top hotel groups around the world.

According to Hotelchatter.com’s 9th annual Hotel Wi-Fi Report (2013), some 63% of hotels around the world now offer Wi-Fi to GUESTS, but a far smaller percentage offers free Wi-Fi, which is standard across every Protea Hospitality Group hotel in Africa. GUESTS each receive 500Mb free per room per day.

Protea Hospitality Group Director of Sales, Marketing and Revenue, Danny Bryer, says the new fibre optic system is particularly exciting from a group and conference and MICE point of view.

“The potential for uninterrupted high definition Video Calls (VCs) that don’t freeze or lag comes with this sort of system, as well as the facility for corporate GUESTS to connect to their networks via VPNs that work properly and fast.”

Bryer says the new offering will give African Pride Crystal Towers Hotel & Spa another unique differentiator among executive hotels and conference centres in South Africa.

“There’s only one reason to offer a service like this, which is to continue to anticipate, meet and exceed our GUESTs expectations and at the same time to reaffirms African Pride Crystal Towers Hotel & Spa’s leading positioning within the luxury market.

“There’s nothing that irritates a GUEST more than internet-connectivity that continually hangs or lags, which is why all Protea Hospitality Group has been investing a great deal of time and resource into providing a consistent Wi-Fi connectivity experience that is both complimentary but most importantly meets the ever changing GUEST needs with regards to staying connected 24/7 on multiple devices, but this system takes it to a whole new level.”

The new line goes live on 17 July 2013.