Pangea Pod Boutique Hotel Case Study
How we helped Pangea Pod succeed
The Customer
Imagine you could stay in a boutique hotel but only pay for the part of it you actually use. At Pangea Pod Hotel, that's what we've created – designer pod accommodation that's affordable, central, and social. It's a hub where guests can meet like-minded travelers and enjoy an espresso or craft beer in The Living Room or a shaken cocktail on The Rooftop Patio, but still have their own personal space at the end of the day. Best of all, we put it right in the heart of Whistler's iconic village, just a couple minutes stroll from Whistler Blackcomb's gondolas
The Challenge
We wanted to allow guests to purchase food and drink at our hotel using their room keys. Our room keys are sleek Pangea-themed RFID chips on adjustable wristbands. We knew that finding a product that could retrieve the RFID data from these devices would be difficult, but protecting ourselves and our customers from fraud and over or under-charging was an absolute priority; we certainly didn't want a situation where a guest could be charged for someone else's bill, as can happen in most hotels where the only verification required is a room number.
We knew we needed a product that could withstand the requirements of staying outdoors in the winter in Whistler, where temperatures can drop to -30 C. It also had to be durable enough to withstand the inevitable knocks and shocks that come with constant commercial use. When a server's hands are slippery, devices tend to hit the deck a lot!
The Application
We have two applications in which we integrated the Socket Mobile product:
- Lightspeed POS Restaurant running on iOS devices: a full-service, future-proof POS system.
- A custom application that we created in-house, which runs on any browser.
The Socket Mobile Solution
We chose Socket Mobile's D600 product because it easily met our requirements, and when we did face a roadblock with development, their support team (Vincent Coli, in particular) really stepped up. We can now securely identify every guest by their room key wirelessly while giving them the reassurance that their folio/credit card is protected by the latest technology.
