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. We connect to it; it is their product, not ours. 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 read every page, so a guest in the highest room number signs in as easily as a guest in the lowest.
It is a poll rather than a live feed: Cloudbeds is asked rather than telling us. Set the interval to a minute if a minute matters.
This system is asked rather than telling us — every five minutes out of the box, and as often as every minute if you want.
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. 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.
A short list, and worth reading before you start.
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. The kit most hotels run: Aruba, Ruckus SmartZone, Cisco Meraki, Juniper Mist, Ubiquiti UniFi, TP-Link Omada, MikroTik, and the hotel gateways Nomadix and Antlabs InnGate.
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.
Sign in with their room number and surname, checked against the in-house list held in Cloudbeds, and stay connected until they check out plus the grace period you set. No password, no email, no form.
Within a few minutes. Cloudbeds is asked on a schedule the property sets, five minutes by default, so a guest who checked in a moment ago may wait for the next check.
The in-house list: room number, surname, the reservation reference, departure date, nationality and language, where held. No rates, no folio, no card details and no passport numbers.
Carried by the Hotel plan, which includes one front-desk connection.
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.
