We read the checked-in reservations out of Cloudbeds and a guest signs in with their room number and surname. It is the simplest of these to authenticate — one key — and the one where the detail that matters is paging.
Cloudbeds is the property's own system and belongs to its makers. We connect to it; we do not resell it, and we are not affiliated with them. cloudbeds.com ↗
On the interval you set — five minutes out of the box — we ask Cloudbeds for the reservations currently checked in, and that answer becomes the list the sign-in page checks against.
Cloudbeds returns that answer a page at a time, and a busy property in the middle of changeover runs to more than one page. We follow the paging rather than assuming it away. A connector that read only the first page would sign in the guests in the low room numbers and quietly fail everybody from room 200 upwards — which would look like a Wi-Fi fault in one wing of the building rather than like what it was.
It is a poll rather than a live feed. Cloudbeds will not call an address a hotel chooses, so we ask. Set the interval to a minute if a minute matters.
This system will not call an address a hotel chooses, so we ask it instead — every five minutes out of the box, and as often as every minute if that is what the property wants.
No rates, no folio, no card details and no passport numbers. Those belong at the front desk, not in a Wi-Fi portal.
A guest types their room number and their surname, and they are online. No email, no form, no questions. Access ends at checkout plus the property's grace period, and wrong answers are cut off after five tries.
That is deliberate, and it is the whole argument for connecting a front-desk system at all. Your guest stood at your desk an hour ago and showed a passport. Asking them to prove themselves again to a web page, with an email address and a consent box, is an insult with a spinner on it — so we do not. The details you learn about that guest come from the system that already knows them, and every session ties back to the booking you already hold.
Short list, and worth reading before the site visit rather than during it.
What it costs. Carried by the Hotel plan, which includes one front-desk connection. What each plan includes →
Connecting Cloudbeds tells us who is staying. Your Wi-Fi equipment is what actually holds a guest at the sign-in page and lets them through afterwards — and whether a checkout can take somebody offline immediately depends on the make.
Forty makes, each with what it can do, what has to be true first, and whether checkout ends a session or the session runs to its time limit.
What happens between a guest joining the Wi-Fi and reaching your welcome page, in plain English, with the technical section for whoever looks after the network.
The other front-desk systems, the Wi-Fi makes, the mailing tools and the CRMs — and the route for a system that will never have a named connector of its own.
How many rooms, what Wi-Fi equipment is in the building, and whether anybody on site looks after the network. That is enough for a straight answer.
