Hoteles Center

Overview

Offering the highest caliber of customer service and experience, Hoteles Center is one of the most exclusive hotel groups in Spain. Thousands of guests pass through the group’s eight hotels every year, relying on the provided WiFi for both business and leisure. In addition to the guest rooms, the hotels also provide event spaces used for conferences, presentations, and demonstrations. Pablo Lao, CIO at Hoteles Center, deployed Cisco Meraki cloud-managed devices to reliably support the high density hotel environments and provide valuable ROI analytics.

Original Networking Challenges

• Previous network failed to provide complete, cohesive management and made creating secure, segmented SSIDs difficult
• Lack of configuration flexibility and visibility into network usage created a road block for proposed marketing campaigns

I can manage all of my networks in the Meraki dashboard and I can send information to the marketing department. We are so happy with the solution that we want to share it with other hotels!

Pablo Lao

CIO

Why Cisco Meraki

• The intuitive dashboard allows Pablo Lao to monitor the network and make quick configuration changes for event spaces, depending on needs
• Built-in analytics provide instant visibility into network usage, from high use areas to customer engagement with targeted marketing campaigns
• High performance APs ensure reliable network access, seamless mobility, and automatic RF optimization for dynamic or challenging environments
• UTM security appliance utilizes layer 7 traffic classification to permit fine-grained access control for wired clients, as well as WAN link bonding for improved uptime

The Deployment

• 500 indoor and outdoor APs and 9 MX80 security appliances were deployed across the 8 locations
• Configuration, installation, and integration with existing access switches took just two months, with Pablo Lao describing the install as “quick and efficient”
• With 15 SSIDs available per network, guests and employees are securely segmented on separate SSIDs

Results

• IT team can now identify bandwidth-heavy applications and implement layer 7 application traffic shaping and firewall rules to ensure appropriate network use
• New SSIDs can be created remotely and at a moment’s notice to accommodate conferences or presentations in the event spaces
• Even without IT staff at every hotel, the centralized management and troubleshooting tools allow the team to be proactive in monitoring the network
• Marketing team can calculate campaign ROI instantly using the downloadable reports, location analytics, and heatmaps available in the dashboard
• Guest and event space users are experiencing improved wireless coverage and service, and are even noting it on trip planning websites