employees

FULLY MANAGED

Posted on July 31, 2025

A New Fully Managed WiFi Service for Parkdean Resorts...

Parkdean Resorts, the UK’s leading holiday park operator, runs 65 parks across England, Scotland, and Wales. Each year, over 3 million guests and 20,000 homeowners rely on its WiFi.

Reliable WiFi is essential—not just for guest satisfaction and loyalty, but also for operations like mobile payments, ordering, and team support. When the old system had reached its limit, Wifinity stepped in to upgrade the infrastructure, boosting performance for both guests and staff.

WIFINITY PROVIDED
• Great connectivity for guests, employees and secure operations
• Simplified guest WiFi user experience
• Premium ‘paid for’ and freemium tiers
• Scalable network to cope with park expansion
• Fully managed service
• Cost effective integration with existing infrastructure

Site surveys began in 2019 and continued through the 2020 COVID-19 closures. Parkdean Resorts used the downtime to restructure and upgrade its WiFi, preparing for growth, expansion and rising guest demand. The upgrade included a direct-to-van (DTV) setup with Cambium backhaul, Ruckus access points and a fully branded captive portal for easier guest access.

A corporate SD-WAN delivers high-speed local internet for cloud services, while a VPN overlay links to private datacentre systems. Both corporate and guest networks are fully managed by Wifinity, which ensures performance, handles network operations with Parkdean, and provides 24/7 UK-based support—so staff can focus on giving guests a great holiday.

THE GUEST USER JOURNEY
• “One and done” process: User connects to login page
• Key lasts indefinitely: Account created key shown and sent
• Works with any device: Home-like connection process
• No interruptions: No need to re-login or re-enter the password

Most of the park is covered, allowing guests to roam without drop-offs, and staff devices stay connected too. During its first full season with the new guest WiFi solution:
• More than 500,000 individual accounts were created
• The premium, paid service generated added revenue
• There was a 400% increase in devices using the optimised DPSK user journey
• Customer satisfaction ratings increased
Wifinity and Parkdean continue to collaborate to improve service and respond to feedback, aiming for a successful 2025 and high guest satisfaction.

THE UPGRADE NOW DELIVERS WIFINITY PROVIDED
• Park-wide, high-speed internet access
• Corporate WiFi service with firewall to run EPOS, guest services and corporate devices
• Automatic onboarding for corporate managed devices with certificate-based network authentication for Parkdean Resorts’ MDM services
• Streaming and entertainment across devices
• High quality VOIP and video calls, supporting remote working
• Home-like guest onboarding using DPSK
• Free or premium ‘paid for’ options
• Flexible plans by day, weekend, week, month or year
• Fully branded Park Connect service
• 24/7 customer services, co-branded communications, help guides
• Monthly service reviews, for customer satisfaction and troubleshooting
• Proactive issue identification and resolution for a better overall network service

Wifinity
020 8090 1290
www.wifinity.co.uk/holidayparkscene

INSURANCE SOLUTIONS

Posted on May 1, 2025

INSURANCE SOLUTIONS

Compass are specialist providers of insurance to the holiday and residential park industry and have over 40 years’ experience in the sector.

We provide solutions for all of your insurance needs from tailored cover for your park buildings, infrastructure, facilities, machinery, vehicles, employees and liability to bespoke schemes for your private owners and customers as an introducer or appointed representative.

Compass Insurance
0344 274 0276
www.compassparks.co.uk

WINTER BLUES FOR PONTINS CLOSURES

Posted on March 5, 2024

WINTER BLUES FOR PONTINS CLOSURES

CAMBER SANDS WAS one of three Pontin’s resorts to close this winter. Pic. cheekylorns

Following recent closures there are now just two parks left in the Pontins brand, Pakefield Holiday Village in Lowestoft, Suffolk, and Sandbay Holiday Village in Kewstoke, Somerset. No public explanation was given by Pontins, or its owner Britannia Hotels, at the time, but employees were allegedly told via email the closure was due to a ‘decline in business’, according to multiple media reports.

No longer visible, The Sun reported a website statement that read: “It is with great sadness that we announce the closure of Pontins Southport Holiday Park. “After assessing the future viability of the park, we have come to the difficult decision to close our doors.

“Unfortunately, this means that Pontins Southport Holiday Park will be closing from Wednesday 3rd January 2024. Extracts from e-mails addressed to employees and shown to local newspapers read: “Due to business levels, Pontins Prestatyn Sands will be closing with immediate effect.

“The company have been reviewing the business levels of the park throughout the 2023 season and have concluded that continuing trading at this park in to 2024 is no longer a viable business decision. “Therefore, it is for that reason that the company have made the difficult decision to implement proposed redundancies at Prestatyn Sands.”

Some members of staff had their employment terminated with immediate effect, while others were instructed to continue working at the park until further notice. The e-mail to employees added: “The hospitality industry all suffered a dramatic downturn during COVID.

“The company continues to review the business levels for the park, and since COVID, this park has not been able to return to reasonable business levels. “Current projections are that the park will make a financial loss in the 2024 season and beyond. “The company are looking to close the holiday park to the public for the foreseeable future.”

There has been frenzied speculation on how the vast sites will be used going forward including claims, denied by the Home Office, that accommodation would be used for refugees. Britannia Hotels were approached for comment but no response was received.