Shropshire luxury holiday business

Digital connectivity at luxury  holiday homes

Alkington Grange Barns is a luxury self-catering holiday cottage complex near Whitchurch, Shropshire, clustered close to an original working farm. The breathtakingly beautiful Shropshire Way runs through the farm and the Llangollen canal is just a hop and a skip down the road.

The holiday complex comprises five self-catering holiday cottages, three large holiday cottages, a converted barn and a 12-bed cottage, and owners James and Emma Blantern live onsite with their family.

Challenge

The state-of-the-art cottages at Alkington Grange are popular with families wanting to holiday in the region and businesses looking for a beautiful environment for corporate meetings and events.

But flaky broadband meant that the Blantern family and the visitors to the holiday cottages were struggling to connect to the internet.

“We had to have four separate BT lines to serve our rental properties, and even then it only delivered around 1.5 Mbps,” explains owner James Blantern.

“Guests would ring up and say ‘it’s broken’ and I would have to go over and explain that it wasn’t broken but unfortunately that was the only speed we could get.”

Finding a solution that was right for the farm’s remote rural location and that could supply the multiple properties that didn’t break the bank had proved difficult.

“I went through the process of applying to get a superfast connection via three different companies. We went to BT Openreach but the cost of installing a fibre connection was £38,000 which was prohibitive. And the two other companies we approached were similarly expensive. The cheapest solution offered was £20,000 and I got so frustrated I was almost at the point of giving up.”

Solution

“In October 2018, Airband engineers came out to do a site survey.

“We are about 8km from Airband’s nearest mast so it wasn’t a simple procedure. The engineers had to put a stronger receiver on to make sure we had the best signal.

“I was really impressed with how they conducted themselves.

“We converted our barns ourselves over a period of years so I have dealt with a lot of tradesmen and I was very impressed by the engineers. They took safety very carefully. They even bought baby mattresses to put under the ladders to protect the roofs.

“It’s very easy to slap up something that works straightaway but that perhaps won’t stand the test of time, but they took the time to do a really good job. I was so impressed I actually sent an email to the engineers’ boss.”

Results

“We now have the capacity for up to 80Mbps and at the moment we are paying for 50Mbps. It’s a vast improvement on what we had before! And it has certainly stopped the moans from the guests in the holiday cottages!

“Because of our multiple needs we opted for a bespoke leased line and it gives peace of mind having the four hour turnaround time in the event there are any issues.”

As well as transforming the broadband for visitors to the holiday cottages, having superfast broadband has transformed James and Emma’s home broadband.

“Before we had superfast, uploading photos to our website would make it crash. And online banking was very difficult – we had to do it at bizarre times of day or night.

“Now it feels like such a novelty being able to do it whenever we want! And as well as helping us run our business more smoothly, now that we have superfast broadband our two children, aged 8 and 9, are now able to watch Netflix which they couldn’t do before.”