Hospitality WiFi provider Airangel has unveiled a new market strategy, to increase its channel based sales and enter markets such as the expanding private rentals sector, in response to increased customer demand and growth of its global WiFi sales.
Underpinning the strategy Airangel has refreshed its core technology, set up new company divisions and created three new brands. This follows it securing £1.7m overseas development funding and making two recent acquisitions including the cloud managed wireless solution provider Captiv.net.
Experts say the global public venue wireless connectivity market is poised for significant growth; according to the analyst Gartner, by 2022 85% of new public venues will require wireless connectivity, up from 30% in 2016.
Airangel has now restructured its business under three divisions: GeniSys – its refreshed guest internet platform for leading global hospitality brands; Activnet – its UK WiFi managed services solution, and; Captivnet – it’s new offer for channel partners, predominantly in continental Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Russia.
Dean Wilkinson, Airangel’s CEO commented,
“Airangel is evolving; we have big plans to take advantage of the increased interest in guest and public venue WiFi and grow the business both domestically and internationally.
“Our strategic acquisitions forming our new channel division Captivnet was our first step. Now, we’ve also launched our new WiFi ‘guest engagement and information system’, GeniSys, plus a new managed services brand, Activnet, to work exclusively with the UK hospitality and private rental sectors. Reflecting this strategy we have restructured and completely rebranded the business to provide a fresh look and feel for the complete Airangel family.”
Airangel has launched Activnet Managed Services. This new division will take over the UK operations, providing managed services based on its GeniSys platform to existing and new domestic large hotel, multi-tenant apartment building and large public venue customers, including Get Living London and Dolphin Square London.
The new GeniSys platform is a complete redevelopment of the company’s MyAirangel product used by thousands of hotels and other venues worldwide including The Ritz London, and Mövenpick Hotels and Resorts. GeniSys is an innovative cloud-managed guest WiFi management platform that provides hoteliers with an easy way to get guests online, provides detailed reports about guests and network performance, and can be used to engage with guests in real-time, whilst they are in the hotel and browsing the internet.
The recent acquisition of Captive.net was a move by Airangel to have a more clearly defined channel strategy. The Captivnet division will continue to provide a growing portfolio of strategic channel partners with a leading ‘over the top’ guest WiFi platform. The solution is designed to complement existing wireless offerings, where partners are installing wireless LAN infrastructure using equipment such as Cisco, Meraki, Mikrotik, Nomadix, and Ruckus. Via existing partner relationships, the Captivnet platform has been introduced into some of the world’s leading hospitality brands including Starwood Hotels and Resorts and Marriott International.
Dean Wilkinson added,
“As we grow internationally, we face the exciting prospect of establishing new channel partnerships, setting up new offices beyond the UK and Dubai, and recruiting more staff to support this. The private rentals sector is also a key focus for us, and we’re looking to secure our position in this market. I’m confident that these recent changes will allow us to do just that.”
