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- Miramar Plaza
- 954 Avenida Ponce de Leon
- Office 201A
- San Juan, Puerto Rico 00907
- + 1 (787) 721 3953
The Vila Galé Cumbuco hotel is an all-inclusive resort in Praia do Cumbuco located 1.5 miles north of the Cumbuco village.
Cumbuco village is part of the city of Caucaia, located 15 miles from Fortaleza, the capital of Ceará state, and 30 miles from the nearest airport.
The resort offers activities that appeal to all ages, at all hours of the day. There are four restaurants, three bars, the Satsanga spa, which includes the Longevity and Vitality Center, as well as a gym, tennis and multisport court and a play center for kids. And best of all, the resort faces a picturesque beach with aquamarine water and a wide strip of white sand!
The Vila Galé Group is one of the largest Portuguese hotel groups and ranks in the top 200 hotel companies worldwide. The group is currently responsible for managing 36 hotel units (27 in Portugal and 9 in Brazil) and has about 3,200 employees.
sq ft covered area
distributed antennas
remote units
A trademark characteristic that unifies all Vila Galé Group developments is that they are built far away from major cities. The remote nature of these locations provides guests with an immersive experience and also fosters the local community, which includes hundreds of employees and their families.
Vila Galé Group is well-known for developing the areas where they establish a presence. As such, the group carried out its planning work for this location with the local municipality to build out the essential infrastructure for the operation. The organization knew that it also needed to achieve a solution for telecommunications infrastructure. In 2014, when the resort opened, the wireless coverage was precarious – only one mobile operator operated in the region, and the quality of mobile and broadband signal was poor. There was not enough capillarity for operators to arrive at the site with optical fiber solutions.
The lack of telecom infrastructure created serious problems for guests. Upon arriving for their vacation at the resort, they were met with an unpleasant surprise: their cell phones did not work. The main type of guest who would stay at the hotel could not afford to spend 15 days without communicating with their work, family, and friends, even on vacation.
In addition, many corporate customers were unable to use the resort’s great infrastructure for corporate events, such as sales conventions, product launches and several other institutional and commercial activities, as there was no reliable cell phone coverage and internet signal. This prevented Vila Galé from competing in an important segment of the hospitality market.
With complaints growing by the day from customers and employees, who also needed to communicate via mobile devices within the resort, it was time to find a permanent solution and thus the partnership between Vila Galé and QMC Telecom began.
The first step to design the best possible solution for Vila Galé Cumbuco was to perform a thorough study of the region. Characteristics that define this resort include that it is far from a big city and situated in a valley. The resort is also surrounded by large dunes, which hinder the propagation of mobile signal.
An indoor-centric solution was selected mainly due to the accelerated deployment process. The construction of a tower would have had a very high environmental and aesthetic impact. Getting the necessary governmental approvals would have delayed the deployment of a solution and thus an improvement in the availability of mobile signal.
After an initial discussion, Vila Galé and QMC agreed that the primary goal of the indoor project was to provide a seamless experience to guests: no guest should experience bad signal or call drops in any area throughout the resort.
With this goal in mind, the QMC team took on the challenge of designing a complex indoor system to cover apartments, chalets, and the entire outdoor area: restaurants, swimming pools, kid`s club, lounge, etc.
Complicating matters, the entire project needed to be executed while the resort was in full operation. In addition to meeting the construction requirements of Vila Galé Cumbuco, QMC would also need to not interfere in guest’s overall experience with the resort.
Indoor coverage for hotels is always challenging due to the prior planning and constant need for alignment in each phase of the implementation, so that there is no conflict with the normal operation of the hotel and no impact to guests’ experience.
To make the process seamless, QMC addressed concerns for the guests’ experience and Vila Galé’s routine operations during the pre-project phase. The QMC technical team gave a smooth implementation the same level of importance as RF dimensioning goals.
The technical preparation phase refers to the dimensioning and 3D modeling of the entire hotel complex which seeks to replicate in the prediction tool the same environment that we would find during the implementation phase.
Attention to detail was crucial in this phase because, in addition to indoor coverage, the entire outdoor area of the hotel complex needed to be covered using the same DAS system.
A new era started for Vila Galé Cumbuco after the QMC indoor system was installed and carriers were activated. Not only was coverage great, but the solution also helped to reduce complaints about the internet signal in general.
Before the system was installed, cell phones did not work, and the Wi-Fi was constantly overloaded as it was the only alternative for guests. Not to mention a total lack of connectivity in the shaded areas, which could be found throughout a 1 MM ft² resort. Finally, Vila Galé Cumbuco started to book corporate business events again, increasing its revenue figures.
Enhancing the customer’s shopping experience through connectivity
Indoor coverage for the leading event hosting venue in Latin America