Roll the dice: competition prompts casino to cater to business guests with an easy-to-manage wireless LAN - Cover Story

Communications News, Dec, 2003 by Dan Foley

Operating a casino hotel and convention center is not all fun and games. Behind the flashing lights, constant action, and exciting entertainment merit and eateries is a serious business, marked by increasing competition among a growing group of players. To succeed in this hotly contested environment, hotels and convention centers must do everything they can to differentiate themselves in order to attract conferences and guests, and thereby increase revenue.

At the same time, the expectations of" travelers have also changed. Today's savvy "road warrior" expects--or perhaps is expected by the home orifice to have little or ,no downtime during travel. Being at a convention or staying in a hotel is not seen as a reason to refrain from conducting business as usual (e.g., checking e-mail, logging into an online videoconference).

Like all hotels and convention/meeting centers, Temecula, Calif.-based Pechanga Resort & Casino felt the challenge of" competition. So, when the resort opened a new 522-room hotel and casino in 2002, Pechanga realized it, too, needed to offer distinctive, alluring services to win new customers and grow its business.

Pechanga's solution was to provide networking services that would enable business guests in maintain the desired connection to the home office. The first step was to outfit each guest room with high-speed Internet access, a service increasingly offered by hotels. Pechanga quickly realized, however, that it must up the ante and determined to offer secure, dependable wireless network access in the public areas of the hotel, such as the convention hail and the meeting rooms, to further increase customer satisfaction. With the technology maturing to deliver Ethernet speed for both laptops and personal digital assistants, wireless networking represented a new vista of opportunity with little to no risk.

"Deploying a wireless network was a way for Pechanga to draw businesses to our new facility and maintain a busy convention calendar," says Rod Luck, director of information technology, Pechanga Resort & Casino. "While some businesses view wireless as nice to have, we see it as a necessary service for us to leapfrog our competition."

WIRELESS-WIRED INTEGRATION

Based in Southern California's gorgeous wine country, Pechanga Resorts & Casino is the largest Native American-owned casino in the state. The AAA four-diamond hotel is nestled in the arms of Mr. Palomar, nearby the San Jacinto and Big Bear mountains, and boasts a 42,000-square-foot convention and corporate meeting center in addition to its casino.

Pechanga reviewed Wi-Fi offerings from several networking vendors. The hotel wanted a solution that would integrate well with its wired Gigabit Ethernet network, was easy to install and manage, upgradeable for future growth, and, perhaps most importantly, provided robust security features. Also important to the resort was Wi-Fi certification, which would ensure maximum compatibility with guest's laptops.

Finally, Pechanga narrowed its choice to 3Corn, whose price/performance ratio was the decisive factor. Pechanga selected a wireless LAN (WLAN) based on 3Com Access Point 8000s.

Today, Pechanga's WLAN consists of 16 Access Point 8000s, which deliver 11 megabits per second (Mbps) Ethernet connections to guests and meeting attendees. It also relies on 14 3Com Ethernet Client Bridges, wallet-sized devices that provide connectivity to the access points for laptops without wireless network interface cards (NICs), and a Nomadix Universal Subscriber Gateway II, which the IT team uses to control access to the network. The entire solution cost Pechanga less than $25,000 and was deployed in less than three weeks.

"In this case, we are measuring return on investment by customer satisfaction and convenience, which are much improved," says Luck. "Additionally, we're drawing more meetings and guests due to our wireless services-all of which helped us recoup the money we spent."

Early in the process, Pechanga worked with a 3Corn network consultant and value-added reseller, Technology Information Group, to set up the network. The first step was to identify the areas in which the resort wanted to offer wireless access.

"Our goal was to provide our guests with network access in any part of the hotel that they need it, which meant targeting high traffic arcas, particularly our meeting and convention areas," says Luck.

WIRELESS ON WHEELS

The implementation team decided to wireless network-enable the convention center, meeting rooms, swimming pool area, and the 12th floor nightclub and ballroom area. Next, the consultants helped Pechanga determine precisely where each access point would be located. Proper location is critical for providing a consistently strong signal. Additionally, functionality within the access points ensure that users do not have to re-authenticate when moving among the coverage zones provided by each device.

One of the more unique deployments in the Pechanga wireless network is the "wireless on wheels" WLAN; access in the meeting rooms, which are smaller, 40-50 person rooms off the convention area. Realizing that setting up flail WLAN access in each of the 14 meeting rooms would be cost-prohibitive, the resort opted for a more mobile solution.