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Front-desk systems

protel: protel, through protel I/O.

We read the in-house list out of protel through protel I/O and a guest signs in with their room number and surname. protel installations vary more than the others here, so the address of your own endpoint is something we ask for rather than assume.

protel 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. protel.net ↗

What the connection does

It reads who is in the building, and nothing else.

On the interval you set — five minutes out of the box — we ask protel I/O for the guests currently in house, and that becomes the list the sign-in page checks against.

The address is required rather than defaulted, and deliberately so. protel Air is hosted and answers at a fixed gateway; an on-premise protel answers at whatever address that property's own I/O endpoint sits on. Guessing would produce a connection that authenticates successfully against the wrong hotel, which is a great deal worse than one that plainly does not work.

It is a poll rather than a live feed, in common with every front-desk system here except Resort Manager.

Within a few minutes

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.

What travels

  • room number
  • surname
  • the reservation reference
  • departure date
  • nationality and language, where held

No rates, no folio, no card details and no passport numbers. Those belong at the front desk, not in a Wi-Fi portal.

What the guest sees

Two things, typed once

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.

The full argument for hotels →

Before you start

What has to be true first

Short list, and worth reading before the site visit rather than during it.

1

The address of the property's protel I/O endpoint. protel Air and an on-premise protel are different addresses, and only the property knows which it has.

2

The property identifier protel uses for the hotel.

3

A credential for that endpoint, issued per property.

What it costs. Carried by the Hotel plan, which includes one front-desk connection. What each plan includes →

The other half of the job

The front-desk system is one side. The Wi-Fi is the other.

Connecting protel 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.

Find your equipment

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 catalogue →

How the sign-in works

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.

Read it →

Everything we connect to

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.

Front-desk systems → · All integrations →

Tell us the property runs protel and we will tell you what is involved

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.