HSNM Hotspot Manager makes PMS integrations available at the click of a button

Gaining the hospitality-specific advantage by integrating with Impala.

HSNM Hotspot Manager powered by Impala is a WiFi captive portal designed for hospitality venues. It allows properties to offer personalised, digital services to guests, cut costs, and increase hotel productivity. For example, guests can securely log into a hotel’s WiFi using their room number and name, with only verbal instructions from the hotel’s staff. This leads to a better overall guest experience.

With headquarters in Italy, HSNM Hotspot Manager have a global footprint of more than 2700 ISPs and resellers in over 60 countries — from New Zealand to Canada, South America to South Africa, Europe and the USA.

Making it easy for ISPs to sell HSNM Hotspot Manager

After speaking with their ISPs and resellers, HSNM Hotspot Manager realised their product could be significantly enhanced for guests by pulling data from a hotel’s Property Management System (PMS).

“ISPs have hotels under their services,” says Marisa Tazzari, Export Sales Manager. “They buy the platform, and manage all their hotspots with HSNM.”

ISPs purchase a subscription to the HSNM Hotspot Manager, and resell the product to their customers. With hundreds of hotspots to manage across a number of different industries, they look for the lowest barrier to entry when selling products.

“They want the PMS integrated with HSNM Hotspot Manager to make it easy for the guest to check in and get access to the wifi,” says Marisa.

The ISPs mentioned to HSNM that it’s expensive and difficult to build direct integrations to the thousands of PMS used by hospitality properties around the world. Plus, the existing APIs provided by HSNM can be difficult to use without experience in software development, so they began to look for a solution.

“HSNM already provides APIs, but you have to be very skilled to work with them,” says Marisa. “You must have developers inside the company, or you must create a company who will be the bridge between us. ISPs have technicians who are very skilled in hotspots and networking, but not in developing software. It can sometimes be difficult to use our APIs to connect to PMS.”

Connecting Impala with the HSNM Hotspot Manager

While the UK office was searching for a PMS integration service provider, they came across Criton, a company which develops bespoke apps for the hospitality industry, and saw that their hotel data is securely powered by Impala.

After getting in touch with the Impala commercial team to discuss the use case and scope of data needed, HSNM began developing a solution powered by Impala for the hotspot portal.

“Initially we wanted to verify if it could work with HSNM and we developed an independent bridge, external of HSNM,” says Marisa.

“Much of this time was spent in establishing the best way for the HSNM WiFi portal and Impala to interact. However, once we realised it was the right solution for HSNM portal, we set to work on the HSNM integration and this was completed on a very fast timescale.”

Though HSNM Hotspot Manager has a large development team, hospitality is not the only industry they provide WiFi Hotspots for, so they must use their internal development resources wisely. By working with an expert third party with deep hospitality industry knowledge, they’re able to gain an industry-specific edge much faster than before.

“Our core business is to develop HSNM as a product,” says Marisa.

“We prefer to have other systems make bridges to the PMS and HSNM. We have our resources for building integrations with Facebook and LinkedIn, but we’d prefer to contract with experienced and skilled people who are experts in this field.”

What’s Next — HSNM Hotspot Manager Version 7

After connecting to Impala, ISPs no longer have to build any PMS integrations themselves. With the rollout of the latest HSNM Hotspot Manager version 7, these ISPs can request a PMS integration directly via Impala.

Marisa says; “HSNM built it once. None of the ISPs have to do the integration work. They can then sell it to their customers quickly and easily.”

ISPs only have to request a particular PMS and in a few clicks, they get all the information they need.

“Once ISPs and hotels connect, they get a key and a password to be entered,” says Marisa. “ And that’s it. It’s fast and easy — these are two adjectives the ISPs adore.”

The Impala integration will be rolled out as part of the latest version of the HSNM Hotspot Manager. In addition, Impala and the HSNM Hotspot Manager team will be doing joint marketing, letting ISPs and hotels know that there is a faster and easier way to connect.

“We plan to highly recommend Impala to our distributors and partners,” says Marisa. “It will save time, and provide their hospitality clients peace of mind with compliance and personalisation. Our partners will contract Impala directly and take advantage of direct negotiation.”

Some advice from Marisa:

“If you need to provide a simple and fast access to get users on board, Impala is the solution. Impala is a flexible system allowing WiFi usernames to be generated from room numbers, booking numbers, user email addresses or any other user information.”