Metal-panel walls that defeated corridor-mounted access points, five disconnected residential blocks, and a remote island location: the brief for the JW Marriott Maldives Resort & Spa staff network was structural before it was technical.
The resort's staff accommodation spans five separate residential blocks, housing the workforce behind one of the Maldives' better-known luxury properties. Standard corridor-mounted access points couldn't punch through the building's metal-panel walls reliably enough to give in-room coverage. Working with channel partners Plexus Distribution and Focus Computers, the resort's IT team moved the architecture to match the constraint: access points go inside the rooms rather than outside them.
Around 95 Zyxel NWA90AX PRO indoor units were installed directly in staff rooms, with NWA55AXE outdoor access points covering gardens and shared exterior spaces. Across each accommodation block, GS1920-24HPv2 smart managed switches form the network backbone, their PoE support reducing cabling demands across a multi-building site. The whole stack is managed through Zyxel's Nebula cloud platform, which provides a unified dashboard across 100-plus devices and runs AI-powered wireless health diagnostics to surface problems before they affect daily operations.
"To ensure a strong and stable internet experience for our associates, we decided to install individual APs inside each room. For this, we needed a high-quality solution at an affordable price. That is why we selected Zyxel Networks' products for our upgrade," said Dilanka Adikari, Senior IT Specialist at JW Marriott Maldives Resort & Spa. Adikari singled out the management layer: "The Zyxel Nebula cloud networking solution has made managing all APs, switches, and their configurations extremely easy. It has simplified our operations and improved the overall network reliability."
Zyxel says more than 7,000 hotels and resorts across 150 markets use its hospitality networking products. Kell Lin, Senior Associate Vice President of Zyxel Networks' Networking Strategic Business Unit, pointed to the operational side of hospitality WiFi as an underserved category: "Reliable connectivity for hospitality workforces is often overlooked, yet it is every bit as demanding as guest-facing networks. After all, guests may be on holiday, but the network never is."
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