Turnkey Hotel Wireless with 24/7 Support

With the impact of technology on communication, productivity, entertainment, and the increasing need for mobility, WiFi has become more important than ever keeping us connected at both work and play, no matter where we are. With that in mind, Red Roof wanted to give their customer an Wi-Fi experience of exceptional quality.

Having a centrally managed system that can be remotely monitored and supported was critical. Having one company to survey, design, architect, install and support 100% 24/7 was the goal. A comprehensive enterprise-class wireless solution was required and Sigmawifi was the answer.

“We chose Morse Technologies and Sigmawifi because of their extensive experience with designing and implementing a state-of-the-art wireless solution that provides proper coverage, accommodates the increasing number of devices the average user has and is scalable as needs change or increase. Their proactive service model enables them to continuously monitor and adjust design, signal, coverage area and performance based on increased needs or usage in any given Red Roof Hotel.” -Director of IT, Red Roof Inn

Challenges

• Establish a unified, enterprise-class wireless network solution for all hotels
• Offer what is an expected world class amenity in today’s hotel standards
• Provide a strategic and cost effective WiFi solution for a customer service driven company
• Implement a cloud based solution that can be centrally managed
• Implement a solution that can provide top notch reporting, throttling and content filtering
• Keep up with the guest demands for flawless streaming media content

Results

• Delivered a robust, scalable, performance-optimized WiFi solution many hotel locations
• Cloud controller-based solution with cloud management, deployment, monitoring and security
• Next-generation wireless not offered at many of the corporate owned Red Roof Hotels
• Enhanced, high-speed wireless coverage for guests with minimal customer complaints
• Ongoing proactive device management, monitoring and 24/7 support offering

Red Roof Inn Selects Morse Technologies and Sigmawifi for design, implementation and support of state of the art company-wide wireless solution for large group of hotels

About Red Roof Inn

Red Roof Inn® was incorporated by founder James R. Trueman in 1972. The brand’s first hotel opened in Columbus, Ohio, with a single room rate of $8.50 in 1973. Today, Red Roof® has nearly 350 properties nationwide and serves millions of guests each year. For over 30 years, the company and hotels have been known for a warm and welcoming spirit, Red Roof® is a leader in the economy hotel segment with franchised, corporate-managed, and corporate-owned properties, serving millions of guests each year. The company and hotels are known for a warm and welcoming spirit, along with their Smart-by-Design®, value-added amenities that are simple, yet economical, and meet the needs of every guest. With coast-to-coast locations, Red Roof has nearly 350 properties in the U.S. The primary goal at Red Roof is to provide customers a savings without sacrificing comfort, most recently the brand has announced a multi-million dollar investment to renovate and upgrade hotels nationwide with sleek and modern NextGen® redesign elements.  Red Roof’s new NextGen hotels will feature updated stylish and home-like interior and exterior designs that demonstrate Red Roof’s dedication to providing customers with an affordable stay in a clean, comfortable, and now, modern room.  Red Roof guests consistently see the brand excelling in expectation and quality in both product and price. Nice Place. Nice Price.® is what every consumer can expect when they stay at any one of our hotel locations; and because our company has a single brand in our portfolio, Red Roof also offers franchisees One Brand. One Focus™ Most recently, Red Roof launched its Nicest Price® advance purchase option, which rewards guests who reserve and pay for their room in advance. Red Roof properties participate in RediCard®, Red Roof’s loyalty program. RediCard members are the first to hear about Red Roof’s best deals, travelers may visit redroof.com and sign up to become a member. Red Roof’s RediCard members receive 48 hours advance notice of promotions and exclusive offers available at Red Roof. Traveling with your pet? Don’t forget that at Red Roof ‘you stay happy, pets stay free’ as one well-behaved pet is welcomed per room, nationwide. The Columbus, Ohio-based company has more than 4,500 employees. For more information or reservations, call 800.RED.ROOF (800.733.7663) or visit redroof.com.

Challenges

Like many hotels, there is legacy wireless in place that does not meet the demands of today’s hotel guests.  With the expectation for great wireless coverage at any hotel a customer stays at, Red Roof Inn as a corporation was forced to partner with reliable solution providers as well as an industry leading wireless solution.

Red Roof had very old wireless technology in place. They wanted to bring the entire company under one network architecture and vision, with advanced enterprise features. Having a cloud based, centralized management offering was critical. Company goals were to offer greater wireless service to its customers, as well as ensuring a scalable and easily manageable solution. A comprehensive enterprise-class wireless solution was required.

Hotels function much like any large corporation with strict guidelines on specifications, performance and security. These areas of concern were paramount. The legacy WiFi did not provide the performance or the usability expected by Red Roof guests and the company recognized the need to invest in a solution that is performance based, security driven and easily managed.

The company goal was to bring corporate level standards to its wireless network for all locations without complexity. A robust, secure and scalable, yet simple solution that enabled a single person to manage and support it from anywhere at any time was crucial.

Solution

Red Roof considered several vendors for its wireless solution but chose Morse for a large portion of their hotels leveraging the Cisco Meraki product primarily due to the combined experience offering of both companies, design expertise, cloud based management, proactive support model, security and most importantly the scalability.  The ability to add access points based on a single dashboard and a serial number and ‘plug and play’ sold us on the Meraki solution.  Other companies technical capability in providing a customized solution to meet the needs of Red Roof and the Corporate HQ requirements.  Morse and Meraki offered a unique design and implementation model that scaled to the vast needs for Red Roof Inn.

Meraki’s provisioning features enable us to configure new APs and ship to any location with simple plug and play installation.  Red Roof uses the centralized Meraki dashboard for global wifi management and has found the partnership and support through Morse perfect for their current and future wireless needs.

Meraki is the recognized leader in Cloud Networking. 100% cloud-based from day one, Meraki’s architecture delivers out-of-the-box security, scalability, and management to enterprise networks. Meraki has been deployed in over 18,000 customer networks worldwide, including Stanford University, British Telecom, Burger King, Starbucks, and M.I.T. Meraki is located in San Francisco, California, and is funded in part by Sequoia Capital and Google.  For more information, visit meraki.com.

Results

Red Roof Inn is committed to the best possible guest wireless experience in all of its corporate owned and managed hotels. Based on the corporate hotel initiatives they needed not only a secure and reliable wireless solution but also one that offers customers seamless connectivity.  Being a customer service driven organization they had to meet the high expectations and demands for flawless wireless connectivity.  Additionally, with the explosion of online streaming media performance had to be impeccable.

Red Roof Inn’s internal IT group has been successful with the help of Morse Technologies at reducing call volume for all hotels that have been upgraded by Sigmawifi and Morse with the Meraki product.  The features and capabilities available now through the dashboard are outstanding.  This includes a single dashboard for ease of management, deployment, reporting, performance tuning, documentation, running heat maps, mapping, etc.

Guests can rest assured that when they stay at a Red Roof Inn they will be guaranteed reliable wireless coverage with the high level of performance expected at all hotels these days.

Red Roof Inn continuously strives to improve guest amenities at all locations. By improving wireless coverage and reliability they can now become creative in their service offerings and amenities.  For example, tablets could be provided for customers to access online music, watch movies or access email or other personal accounts via Wi-Fi. There is the potential to stream content over TVs in lobbies including infomercials and advertisements targeted to customers.  There are many ways to get creative without the limitations of wired networks.

No more bumpy roads

While Red Roof Inn is at the top of its game for providing superior service to its customers, and is one of the top budget hotels in the country, it recognized the need and benefit of a robust wireless network. With Sigmawifi, Morse and Meraki, Red Roof now leverages a comprehensive wireless architecture that can easily expand and grow with the company, bringing each of its hotels under one company vision.

The structure of the wireless design we implemented enables Red Roof to offer flexibility of features and capabilities for each hotel, depending on requirements and needs.

The guest experience is now significantly improved and Red Roof looks forward to taking advantage of further service offerings by Morse and Sigmawifi.