World famous Lion Country Safari is a modern, full-service KOA campground in West Palm Beach, FL.
It caters to campers seeking an exciting wild animal adventure in the nearby Safari Park. The campground prides itself
on offering a suite of amenities in order to keep customer satisfaction high and encourage repeat visitors.
Lion Country Safari had been hearing a growing number of requests for broadband Internet access. A single
dial-up connection, for which guests needed to wait in line, had become unacceptable. Furthermore, they
knew that to stay competitive in the industry, high speed broadband was a must.
KOA had been approached by a number of vendors with different wifi service models, including one offering
free equipment in exchange for a percentage of the revenue on a paid service. KOA decided that wireless had
reached the point where guests expected it at no charge, and so decided to offer it as an amenity service.
However, Lion's deployment situation was not straightforward. They needed to provide reliable coverage to 28
wooded acres, and had a limited IT staff and budget. Furthermore, they knew they did not want to be in the
business of fielding customer complaints for an unreliable network.
 Lion County had heard about Meraki's low-cost approach to
large scale wireless networks through word of mouth.
After a brief and successful evaluation, they deployed the
solution throughout the site.
The campground uses seven Meraki Outdoor access points
mounted on light poles throughout the property. The
interconnected nature of the mesh allows RVers to get access
from multiple APs, reducing the effects of interference from
external sources, as well as the large metal RVs themselves.
KOA also takes advantage of Meraki's bandwidth limiting
feature. This allows their T1 line to do double duty, servicing
both guest access and day to day business needs.
 With a single IT person on staff, Meraki's wireless solution has
performed extremely well with very little maintenance or
downtime. In less than 6 months, the network has supported
over 1,000 users while at the same time exceeded uptime
expectations.
The successful deployment has been a hit with travelers and
allowed Lion Country Safari to remain competitive through the
offer of ubiquitous wireless Internet access throughout their
campground.
"Our wireless Internet service is a hit with our guests and allows Lion Country Safari to stay
competitive among the many vacation destination options available to families today. With Meraki,
we were able to put the service in place quickly and affordably, and can easily expand the coverage
area as our needs change."
—Marc Unterhalter, Vice President, Lion Country Safari |
