Communications News: Roll the dice: competition prompts casino to cater to business guests with an e

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.

When a group requests wireless access, the hotel staff rolls an access point into the room on a cart, just as they would any audio/visual equipment. A 3Com Ethernet Client Bridge (ECB) is located in each meeting room for attendees without wireless-equipped laptops. A user simply connects to the ECB with an Ethernet cable and the ECB provides a wireless connection to the access point.

Pechanga's casino floor does not have wireless coverage, although there is access in the swimming pool area on the third floor.

The majority of WLAN users are business travelers seeking to stay as connected to work as possible. Most tunnel back to their corporate networks through a virtual private network setup. The guest then uses the connection to keep up on e-mail, conduct Web-based videoconferencing, do research on the Web or access files on the corporate LAN. Convention exhibitors also use the WLAN to connect to demos and product information over the network.

On the user side, guests simply need a laptop with an IP address, either set by their own IT department or generated via DHCP, and a wireless NIC. For those laptop users without wireless NICs, Pechanga offers 3Com wireless LAN PC Cards with XJACK antennas, at a small charge during their stay.

The WLAN is easy to manage for the resort's IT team, Luck says. Web-based tools, embedded in the 3Corn products and the Nomadix gateway, enable Pechanga to monitor performance, set configurations and run diagnostics. The network integrates seamlessly with the resort's wired Gigabit Ethernet network and can support up to 256 users per access point. Pechanga can also add more access points as needed, preparing the resort for future growth, such as the demand created by a large convention.

"The network has been particularly helpful in creating new meeting business, a key revenue source for the resort," offers Luck. The Information Technology Security Conference cited wireless connectivity as a primary factor in choosing Pechanga to host its heavily attended annual meeting earlier in 2003.

"The resort hosts a wide variety of meetings, from high-tech conventions to university and corporate meetings-all of which want and appreciate our wireless network," says Luck. "It's been every bit the difference-maker we hoped."

Although Luck calls WLANs as dependable and reliable as their wired counterparts, Pechanga still faced some planning and implementation issues, including everything from security and laptop configurations to deciding whether to bill for the service.

Like many organizations interested in wireless networks, Pechanga was primarily concerned with security--ensuring every guest could use its WLAN risk-free. While planning the network, Pechanga focused on three major security issues: making authentication simple, protecting guests' data traffic from unauthorized users and insulating its corporate LAN from wireless users.

Authentication proved to be a snap. "Because we deployed wireless hotspots, the network is as open as possible, and anyone with a wireless-enabled computer can get on," offers Luck.

Since most wireless users engage the WEAN to access their corporate network, they receive high-level security from their VPN connection. Guests with a 3Corn wireless PC Card and XJACK antenna in their laptop gain additional encryption protection, further ensuring that their wireless activities are safe from prying eyes. Select 3Corn wireless NICs and access point devices feature an encryption protocol based on the company's dynamic security link (DSL) technology, which automatically generates a unique security key for each session. In addition to DSL, these products offer other security features, including WEP encryption, RADIUS authentication and 802.1x support.

"Security was our biggest concern from day one," says Luck. "During deployment, however, we learned we could achieve it fairly easily. We haven't had any problems and don't expect to. By using high-end, enterprise-level access devices with built-in security features, and by infusing security measures into the network, we saved ourselves potential aggravation and difficulties."

With Pechanga's 2,800 employees to support, Luck and his IT team determined early on in the planning stages that the wireless network needed to be easy to access for the guests, requiring little or no laptop configuration on IT's part. "We didn't want this to be a case of quadrupling our workload by having to work on all our guest's laptops," he says. "We did not want to, nor do we have the capability to, get into guest laptop support."

This issue was effectively solved through Pechanga's open policy for accessing the wireless network, which does not require configuration efforts. Security measures, such as MAC address-based authentication, however, would have required significant configuration on each laptop.

Some hotels bill for extra services, such as wireless network or high-speed Internet access. Pechanga is equipped to do so, via the Nomadix device, but the resort opted to offer the access as a free service, rather than use it to create a revenue stream.

"We are a four-diamond hotel and want to make sure that our guests have all the amenities they need to make for a comfortable, enjoyable stay," Luck explains. "We decided at the outset not to charge for the network access. In doing so, we've enhanced guest satisfaction and also created a competitive advantage over hotels that either don't offer the service or charge for it. We've also removed the effort of setting up the billing system."

The staff in the Pechanga restaurants and bars may be the next to use Wi-Fi technology, in order to ensure faster more efficient order taking and bill processing. By equipping wait staff with wireless-enabled hand-held devices, food and drink orders can be taken at tableside and sent directly to the kitchen, greatly reducing the chance for errors in the order and better utilizing staff time, similarly, credit card payments can be handled quickly and efficiently right at the table, via wireless technology. The resort hopes to roll out such capabilities next year. The WLAN may also find its way into the 85,000-square-foot casino area.

"Wireless technology has opened up a wide range of" ways to continue to boost customer satisfaction, We are always looking at ways to expand our wireless deployment," concludes Luck.

3Com's network

3Com, with headquarters in Rolling Meadows, III., is a provider of voice and data networking products, services and solutions for enterprises and public sector organizations of all sizes. Offering a wide range of both wired and wireless solutions. 3Corn's standards-based approach includes a focus on enterprise products in four categories: wired switches and reuters; wireless access points, gateways and wireless PC cards; voice-over-IP and security applications; and network management solutions and element management.

Bruce Claflin was named president and chief executive officer of 3Corn in January 2001. He joined 3Corn as president and chief operating officer in August 1998. Before joining 3Com, Claflin served us senior vice president and general manager, sales and marketing, for Digital Equipment. Prior to being named to that position in 1997, he was vice president and general manager of Digital's personal computer business unit.

Claflin joined Digital from IBM where he had worked for 22 years. He started with IBM in 1973 and held a number of sales, marketing and senior management positions. Claflin serves on the hoard of directors of Time Warner Telecom, as well as serving on the hoard of directors at Advanced Micro Devices.

For more information from 3Com: www.rsleads.com/312cn-251