The owners of a rural Shropshire hotel are investing thousands of pounds in a new wireless internet system to improve services for its guests.

The newly upgraded system is to be installed at The Best Western Valley Hotel in Ironbridge this month (May) and will vastly improve internet speed and connectivity for hotel guests.

Investment in the new system, which will amount to around £10,000 over a three year period, comes almost a year ahead of the planned rollout of superfast fibre broadband in the Ironbridge area.

Lisa Snape, sales and marketing manager for the hotel, said: “Guests, particularly our corporate clients, assume a good internet connection in the same way as they do running water.

“Unfortunately some parts of Shropshire including Ironbridge have particularly poor broadband speeds which makes working online slow and frustrating.

“Whilst we aware of the plans to rollout superfast fibre optic broadband across the borough we have been concerned about the timescales of this scheme for some time.

“Ironbridge falls into phase three of the rollout which means we will have to wait until Spring 2017 at the earliest to benefit from superfast fibre broadband and this is assuming there are no delays with the project.

“We think this is too long too wait. We already feel way behind the rest of Shropshire let alone other parts of the country and we know our guests will view the investment as a positive one.

“The new wireless internet system will provide much faster internet speeds for our guests than the current broadband connections and means people can use their ipads and tablets for browsing the internet, watching movies, playing games or business use.

“Being online is a regular part of modern day life. People like to be connected and whilst we welcome efforts to get Shropshire connected to superfast fibre broadband we couldn’t help feeling things needed to move more quickly.”

The family run Valley Hotel, which has 44 bedrooms, was among one of the first Best Western hotels in England to offer free Wifi to all guests and has been providing internet access in every bedroom for the past five years.

For more information about The Best Western Valley Hotel call 01952 427849 or click here to visit their website.

Photo: Hotel staff member Corey Gough-Lindsay with guest Paul Chadwick.