Avaya is enabling Oregon-based Boulder Falls Inn to make good on offering Wi-Fi as a key amenity for its guests as well as its own staff.
By leveraging the Avaya IPO Office platform and Avaya Wireless LAN, the hotel is able to provide a consistent Wi-Fi service.
Located on the campus of a recently built medical school in rural Lebanon, Oregon, the Best Western Premier Boulder Falls Inn has 84 guest rooms, a restaurant, 12,000 square feet of conference space and 110 employees.
The hotel's guests range from university- and healthcare-related visitors to conference attendees and leisure travelers.
Prasad Pammidimukkala, senior director of product management at Avaya, told FierceInstaller that Wi-Fi has become a key indicator of a hotel patron’s overall experience.
“If you go anywhere, people rate their hotel stay depending on how good the Wi-Fi network is, and go back to a hotel that has better Wi-Fi connectivity than another hotel that does not even though the other amenities may be better,” Pammidimukkala said. “Wi-Fi is becoming an important component of hotel technology upgrades.”
To enhance the Wi-Fi coverage, a new wall jack-mounted Wi-Fi access point was installed in hallways on each of the hotel’s floors. These devices come equipped with a four-port Ethernet switch and wireless access point.
“Those hotels that have the need to provide the best in class experience and have brick walls can use these types of access points,” Pammidimukkala said. “Typically, the AP that’s in the hallways does not get through the walls and the four-port Ethernet switch provides connections to the IP phones, the televisions and other ports for a guest computer, even though most guests connect wirelessly.”
Working in conjunction with 10D, an Avaya channel partner, which installed the Avaya solution and service to Boulder Falls Inn, the vendor installed a new set of Wi-Fi access points and voice systems.
Nia Ridley, general manager for the Boulder Falls Inn, said in a release that while we knew Wi-Fi and phones were key issues, “we were moving so quickly that other issues took precedence over the phones and wireless.” Still, Ridley said the hotel “didn't have any issues" after 10D and Avaya installed the system.
Boulder Inn is not the only hotel that’s seen a benefit from enhanced Wi-Fi. While he could not name the specific hotel, Pammidimukkala said a customer complimented a major hotel chain on its Wi-Fi experience, which is a rare occurrence.
At this specific hotel, Avaya and one of its network installation partners upgraded the hotel’s Wi-Fi network, where every room got its own access point, in December.
“An IT manager at a Las Vegas hotel that got a call from a guest was bracing to hear that the user could not connect,” Pammidimukkala said. “Instead, the caller said I wanted to complement on your wireless network and your wireless network has been really good.”
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