One of the north east’s top hotels is laying down the law on customer service by installing the latest wireless internet system and offering it to guests free of charge.

Judges Country House Hotel at Kirklevington Hall near Yarm has signed up with MyZones, the Onyx Group’s WiFi partner, to provide wireless internet access throughout its bedrooms, meeting rooms, 200-seat wedding and conference facility and other public areas.

And hotel bosses believe that the service’s flexibility and functionality is already giving them an additional way of bringing in extra business.

Set in 22 acres of immaculate garden, the 21-bedroom Judges Hotel is one of just 200 hotels in the UK to be given a three-star ‘Inspector’s Choice’ rating by the AA, and its restaurant is also placed in the country’s top 100 by the same organisation.

The hotel mostly caters for corporate guests through the week, with around 30 per cent coming from the US and a further 20 per cent from other foreign locations.

It is no stranger to adopting the latest technologies, having already installed iPod/MP3 player docks in all the guest bedrooms, and general manager Tim Howard believes that taking forward-thinking attitudes like these helps set the hotel apart from its competition.

He says: “We’re always looking ahead to the next developments in our industry and believe that free wireless connectivity will be standard across the hotel business within a short time, so putting a value-added service like this in place now really helps to differentiate us from our competition.

“We looked at several different options that are available on the market, but the all-round package that it offers, allied to our positive relationship with the Onyx team, from whom we already get our existing broadband network, made MyZones the stand-out option – and we’ve been very pleased with how it has worked.

“Our guests have had no trouble in utilising the system, and it is regularly used for things like video-conferencing as well as straightforward wireless connectivity – the only surprise that guests have had is that, unlike in most other places, they don’t have to pay for it and we get a lot of positive comments back from them as a result.”

Hotel guests are provided with an individual user name and password from reception, thus providing them with free Internet access for their wireless-enabled laptop computers or PDAs, and security measures within the MyZones system’s comprehensive management facility restrict the use of the service to authorised users only.

MyZones also allows companies to modify the first page on which users land to include any message they choose, such as information on products, services or forthcoming events.

Bob Cleary, Business Development Manager at MyZones, adds: “Competitive advantage is very hard to come by in the hotel and leisure sector, especially within the business travel market, and services such as ours can make a very memorable difference to corporate guests’ experience of staying in a particular hotel.

“By choosing to make wireless connectivity free to their guests, the Judges Hotel is reinforcing its extremely high service standards and setting a new challenge for its rivals.”