Accor builds Better, Smarter Wi-Fi Networks with Ruckus

Ruckus Wireless has announced that Accor SA has deployed Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi products and technology across 100 hotels in seven countries throughout Latin America to support free Wi-Fi available in leading brands such as ibis, ibis budget, Mercure, Novotel, Pullman, and Sofitel.

Accor initiated deployment of its Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi networks last year, and has since completed installation of thousands of Ruckus ZoneFlex access points (APs) within these hotels.
 
The Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi networks are also being used for various point-of-sale (POS) tasks at the majority of the hotel restaurants in these Accor Latin America properties, and to support backoffice applications being used by hotel staff at some of the hotels.
 
Carla Milovanov, Director of IT for Accor Latin America, said, Once we confirmed from surveys that Wi-Fi was by far the most important amenity we could provide to our guests, we immediately decided not only to improve our Wi-Fi networks across many of our key Latin America properties, we also decided it was important enough to offer for free to attract new guests as well as to keep guests coming back again and again.
 
For its hotels, Accor has selected and deployed the Ruckus ZoneFlex 7341 high performance, 802.11n mid-range indoor access points featuring Ruckus-patented BeamFlex adaptive antenna technology. The ZoneFlex 7341 Smart Wi-Fi APs are centrally managed with Ruckus ZoneDirector 1100and ZoneDirector 3000 controllers, which provide best-in-class WLAN-wide network, security, RF, and location management.

Additionally, Accor has incorporated Ruckus SmartMesh Networking in select hotels where Ethernet cable backhaul to connect individual APs is cost-prohibitive.