By James, Owner of Fusion Telecoms
For years, I’ve been installing guest WiFi systems for hospitality and retail businesses across the region. Pubs, restaurants, hotels, cafes. Every single one of them sat on a goldmine of customer data and had no idea what to do with it.
That bothered me.
The Problem Nobody Was Solving Properly
Picture a destination restaurant in the countryside. The signal on your phone drops the moment you pull into the car park. Customers rely on the WiFi. They connect, they eat, they leave, and the owner never hears from them again unless they happen to come back.
Some of those owners know they should be doing something with that data. A few have tried. They’ve handed a spreadsheet of email addresses to a member of staff and asked them to send something on Mailchimp once a month. It’s sporadic, untargeted, and quickly becomes another job nobody has time for.
Others have called a marketing agency. They’ve been quoted a retainer that makes their eyes water, spent weeks briefing and re-briefing the agency on what offers to send this month, and still felt like they weren’t getting value.
The result in both cases? The data sits there. No follow-up. No Google reviews being encouraged. No way to win back a customer who hasn’t been in for three months. Revenue left on the table, every single week.
I knew there had to be a better way. I just couldn’t find it.
Why Existing Products Didn’t Cut It
I looked at what was on the market. The problems were consistent:
Pricing models that punish growth.
Most platforms charge per WiFi access point or tier their pricing based on the number of customer records captured. For an SME, that model scales against you at exactly the wrong moment.
Fragmented tools.
Data capture is one product. Email marketing is another. Google review management is a third. Businesses were being asked to stitch together multiple subscriptions and still needed someone to run it all.
No automation.
The platforms that did exist required constant input. Someone still had to decide what to send, when to send it, and to whom. That defeats the purpose for a small business owner who is already doing everything themselves.
I’d been using Art of WiFi with my customers for years. It’s excellent at what it does: capturing guest data cleanly and reliably through a branded login portal. But it doesn’t act on that data. It collects it and hands it back to you. The question of what to do next was always left unanswered.
That’s when I had a conversation that changed things.
How WiFiPortl Was Born
I met Alex, the owner of Expect Best Software, through BNI. We got talking and I told him exactly what I’d told you above. I said I had always wanted to build a solution to this problem, something genuinely affordable that local businesses could actually use without needing a marketing team behind it. But I couldn’t find anything on the market I could offer my customers with confidence.
What I also brought to that conversation was over 15 years of experience working in hospitality. I understood the environment these businesses operate in, the pressure on margins, the lack of time, and the scepticism towards tech solutions that promise the world and require a full-time administrator to run.
Alex loved the idea. We sat down, mapped out what it would need to do, and decided to build it ourselves.
Expect Best brought the software development expertise. Fusion Telecoms brought years of experience in guest WiFi infrastructure and a clear picture of what hospitality and retail businesses actually need. Art of WiFi provided the proven data capture backbone, with API access that allowed us to pull that data into our own platform for processing.
The result is WiFiPortl.
What WiFiPortl Actually Does
WiFiPortl sits on top of your existing guest WiFi. When a customer connects, they complete a simple login that captures their name, date of birth, email address, postcode and phone number. They actively opt in to marketing at this point, so everything that follows is fully GDPR compliant. Customers can also update their preferences at any time through their profile on the login page.
From that moment, three automated email sequences run without you lifting a finger. All of them are fully branded to your venue.
The follow-up.
The day after their visit, the customer receives a thank you email. It asks about their experience and offers two paths. If they had a great time, they are directed straight to your Google Business listing to leave a review. If something wasn’t right, they are given a direct line back to you so you can resolve it privately. You protect your reputation and demonstrate that you care, automatically.
The birthday offer.
Because you captured their date of birth at login, WiFiPortl sends a personalised birthday offer to every customer on their birthday. The offer is set by you and is unique to your venue. A unique redemption code is generated for each customer so you can track and manage it easily.
The win-back message.
If a customer has not returned and connected to your WiFi after a set number of months, WiFiPortl sends them a re-engagement email. It acknowledges they haven’t been in for a while and gives them a reason to come back. No manual list-checking. No remembering to follow up. It just happens.
All of this runs in the background. You set it up once, and it works.
The Pricing Model Is Different By Design
We made a deliberate decision to price WiFiPortl as a flat monthly fee for the full suite. Currently that sits at approximately £40 per month as a bolt-on to Fusion Guest WiFi Hotspot.
That is it. No per-access-point charges. No tiered pricing that penalises you for having more customers. No separate subscriptions for email marketing, data capture, and review management.
For a small or medium-sized hospitality or retail business, this changes the maths entirely. You are not choosing between WiFiPortl and a marketing agency. You are choosing between WiFiPortl and doing nothing, because nothing else at this price point does all of this in one place.
Who This Is For
WiFiPortl is built for hospitality and retail businesses that already offer guest WiFi and are not doing anything meaningful with the data it generates.
Specifically, if you run a pub, restaurant, hotel, bar, or retail outlet and any of the following sounds familiar, this was built with you in mind:
- You provide WiFi with a password and that’s the end of it
- You have customer data but no consistent way of marketing to it
- You’ve looked at email marketing tools but found them too complicated or too expensive to run without help
- You’ve been quoted agency fees that don’t make sense for your size of business
- You want more Google reviews but have no process for encouraging them
- You want to bring back lapsed customers but have no way of identifying or reaching them
Where We Are Now
WiFiPortl is moving into its testing phase with a trusted customer, a pub and restaurant in the countryside, shortly. This pilot will allow us to refine the product in a real-world environment before a wider launch.
If you want to be among the first to hear when WiFiPortl is available, or if you want to have a conversation about whether it is right for your business, get in touch now.
Email: hello@fusion-telecoms.com
Register your interest and we will be in touch directly.
WiFiPortl is a joint product of Fusion Telecoms and Expect Best Software
