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Hotel Lucia Case Study

Hotel Lucia, an award-winning hotel catering to business travelers, is committed to providing a superior guest experience through world-class service and leading-edge technologies. Hotel Lucia selected Eleven Wireless to deploy a Wi-Fi network throughout the hotel, providing the business traveler with fast, reliable and easy access to their corporate network and the Internet. The Eleven Wi-Fi network increases customer satisfaction and gives guests broadband network access, just like they enjoy at the office.

The Solution
In May of 2002, Eleven equipped downtown Portland Hotel Lucia with Wi-Fi access for all its rooms, meeting rooms and common areas, enabling guests to quickly and easily log onto the Internet. Hotel guests pay for 24 hours of wireless access that lets them get online at their own convenience, rather than being tied to wired Internet access in their room or a designated hotel business center. The Eleven network supports VPNs, so corporate users can get online without reconfiguration headaches. Guests can even access their corporate email or the surf the Internet from the Typhoon! Thai restaurant on the hotel’s ground floor.

“By following a simple connection process, guests can bypass busy signals and the hassle of local access numbers, not to mention crawling behind the bed to plug in the phone line,” said Hotel Lucia’s general manager Howard Jacobs. While Hotel Lucia charges guests for Internet access, it offers free use of a Wi-Fi card for guests during their stay for those without Wi-Fi capability. This card is all guests need to access the network.

Hotel Lucia’s Wi-Fi Network
Eleven Wireless, based in Portland, Oregon, is at the forefront in developing wireless broadband solutions for hotels, convention centers and other areas where business travelers congregate. The Hotel Lucia network is built on the 802.11b wireless standard (Wi-Fi), and consists of wireless access points, a network switch, a gateway device and Eleven’s proprietary network monitoring server. The core intelligence of the solution is the backend software infrastructure developed and hosted centrally by Eleven, called ElevenOS ™. This solution provides billing, authentication, roaming, network management, customer support, among other capabilities. It allows guests the option to easily bill Internet access directly to their hotel room.

The wireless network is monitored and managed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from the Eleven Network Operations Center (the NOC), where the status of every element in the wireless network is constantly checked, and network engineers immediately notified of any anomalies. The Eleven Network Operations Center is mirrored in two geographically different locations on different Internet providers to insure that connectivity outages do not prevent Eleven from monitoring the availability of the network, or impact the ability to provide end user support and troubleshooting. Trained support technicians are available to guests 24 hours a day, every day of the year to help solve guests’ technical problems and ensure fast and easy connectivity to the Hotel Lucia wireless network.

Broadband and Wi-Fi — A Growing Trend
Hotel Lucia is capitalizing on a national trend, as business travelers increasingly expect wireless broadband access where they travel. Offering wireless broadband to guests helps hotels generate increased profit through higher occupancy, increased repeat customers, and enhanced overall satisfaction. The move to Wi-Fi offers hotels and customers even more convenience and greater ROI than deploying wired broadband networks. Gartner Group analyst William Clark estimates that “By 2006, there are expected to be 89,000 public Wi-Fi network access points and more than 99 million Wi-Fi users worldwide.” Hotels implementing wireless broadband networks gain a much bigger cost savings and ROI than those implementing wired broadband solutions. Wi-Fi is significantly more cost-effective to deploy than any wired network (including running data over existing phone lines with solutions such as long-reach Ethernet) — sometimes a third to half the cost.

Increasingly, hotel receptionists are fielding calls for people, and the first question is, '”Do you have high-speed broadband or wireless access?" And this trend will only increase in the future. Hotels that offer broadband and wireless access can advertise as a “destination site” for business travelers and increase repeat business.

Results
Goli Ameri, a telecommunications consultant with Portland-based eTinium, said her research has found that about 2 to 3 percent of customers use the service at Wi-Fi-enabled hotels. "To break even, you need 5 percent usage," she said. "If that usage is not there today, it will be there in six to 12 months." Hotel Lucia, which has provided Wi-Fi since May of 2002, reports a 5 percent usage rate. "It's actually been very favorably received, more than we expected, partly because of the mix of business we have," said Diane Yoder, the hotel's controller and Director of Human Resources. "Our hotel appeals to the young, professional business travelers who carry a laptop." Additionally, hotels focused on business travelers claim higher occupancy rates and increased guest satisfaction after Wi-Fi has been deployed.

Guests love the high-speed, totally unrestricted access offered by Hotel Lucia’s Wi-Fi network. And the wireless network quickly pays for itself as Wi-Fi use grows, resulting in increased revenue and ROI for Hotel Lucia. According to Howard Jacobs, Hotel Lucia’s General Manager, “Having wireless access is extremely important when opening a new hotel and is a big draw with business travelers. It has contributed significantly to our success. Wireless access will always be included in any new lodging facilities we open.”

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