Flagship Hotels in Salt Lake City, Utah Deploy 802.11ac; Recognize ROI in Less Than Two Years
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company (NYSE:HPE), today announced
that Grand America Hotels and Resorts which include seven properties in
Utah, Wyoming and Arizona, are upgrading their wireless infrastructure
using Aruba’s 802.11ac solution. Two of the flagship hotels, the Grand
America, a AAA Diamond Award-winning, Forbes Star property, and the
Little America, a popular, 30-year old local landmark, are the first to
complete the upgrade to Gigabit Wi-Fi.
While all seven of the Grand America Hotels and Resorts use Aruba
wireless infrastructure, the hotel chain implemented 802.11ac at its
Salt Lake City Grand America and Little America properties first due to
the significant event revenue they generate. According to Matt Ballif,
Director of Event Technology for the Grand and Little America Hotels,
the approximately 650,000 hotel guests who visit the two hotels and
another 750,000 to one million annually who attend hotel events such as
meetings, conferences, banquets and weddings, demand faster, more
reliable Wi-Fi.
“For our event attendees, the wireless network is often mission
critical,” said Ballif. “From the beginning, our focus was on our
100,000 square feet of event and meeting space in the two flagship
hotels and upgrading our infrastructure to provide high-speed,
dependable connectivity in these frequently dense environments. That led
us to taking on the entire property to upgrade the guest rooms, as well.”
Ballif noted that density had been a struggle in the past and was a key
driver for the upgrade. He and his team managed a recent event at the
Grand America Hotel where they saw an average daily use of 800 devices
in a 150 x 150 square foot meeting space.
“When you’re talking 800 people or devices within a footprint area this
size, it’s very difficult to ensure a good connectivity experience for
all of those users, but with the new Aruba 802.11ac infrastructure, we
were able to accomplish this. The customer was intent from the beginning
on delivering a top-notch experience for meeting attendees and we
delivered.”
The upgraded infrastructure in the Grand America and Little America
hotels includes Aruba 802.11ac
220 Series APs deployed in hotel meeting spaces and the smaller,
Aruba 200
Series APs in their 1,500 guest rooms. The Aruba ClientMatch™
technology is key to allowing guests to roam through the hotel and
meeting spaces while enabling the infrastructure to support the high
density of devices required. The hotels are also using Aruba 7240
Mobility Controllers and AirWave
network management. Ballif is particularly pleased with AirWave’s
ability to provide meaningful reporting that his event guests appreciate.
Said Ballif, “I can produce a report either during or after the event to
help our event managers plan for the following year. Information such as
how many devices connected to the network, the type of traffic the
devices were sending and receiving and even which devices consumed the
most bandwidth, is immensely useful for our clients. In the past, groups
would ask me for data on their bandwidth consumption and I couldn’t
provide it, but now I can give them very detailed information to assist
with their planning and ensure they come back next year.”
For the future, Ballif plans to evaluate Aruba’s ClearPass
Policy Manager, as this would allow the hotels to define guest
access policies based on user roles to offer tiered services to event
attendees easily. In addition, the Grand America Hotels and Resorts are
testing Aruba Beacons and the Meridian Mobile App platform at their Sun
Valley, Idaho resort as they’re interested in the potential marketing
and promotional services associated with a mobile app and beacons
deployment, as well as allowing guests to use capabilities such as
wayfinding to navigate around the resort.
According to Ballif, the new Aruba infrastructure has been an
overwhelming success, allowing the hotels to achieve a return on
investment in just a year and a half. Perhaps, more importantly, the
hotels’ customers have come to view the Grand America and Little America
hotels as preferred destinations, and the technology is part of this
positive outlook.
“We’ve been told by many of our guests that we can provide amenities on
a technology level that most properties can’t,” he stated. “These are
technology-savvy groups and they view our properties as unique. The
wireless infrastructure is critical to enabling our team to continue
providing this high level of service to our customers.”
About Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, is a leading provider of
next-generation networking solutions for enterprises of all sizes
worldwide. The company delivers IT solutions that empower organizations
to serve the latest generation of mobile-savvy users who rely on
cloud-based business apps for every aspect of their work and personal
lives.
To learn more, visit Aruba at http://www.arubanetworks.com.
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include Aruba Networks®, Aruba The Mobile Edge Company® (stylized),
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Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
Pavel Radda, +1-408-419-0294
Senior Director of Corporate Communications
pradda@arubanetworks.com
OR
LSH Communications for Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
Lori Hultin, +1-818-879-4651
Principal
lhultin@arubanetworks.com