EC News DeskAruba has announced that Nobu Hospitality, a luxury lifestyle brand founded by Nobu Matsuhisa, Robert De Niro and Meir Teper, is standardising on Aruba as its preferred network infrastructure vendor for three of its new hotels in Chicago, Warsaw and London Portman Square. Using the foundation of Aruba ESP, a combination of Aruba wired, wireless and security solutions, Nobu Hotels is enabling highly secure and reliable Wi-Fi, as well as a range of IoT applications, that help provide a superior experience for its guests, replete with all of the comforts and technologies they have at home.
To accomplish this, the edge, where data is generated, secured, analysed and acted upon, must serve as the foundation for leveraging actionable analytics from Nobu Hotel’s integrated network, business applications and guest preferences, to deliver new on-property guest experiences. According to Rodney Linville, Global Corporate Director of IT for Nobu Hospitality, Aruba’s open, secure and nimble cloud-native infrastructure was the ideal choice to reflect the Nobu Hotel brand.
With the help of key integration partners, Nobu is deploying a range of Aruba solutions at its various properties. Among these are Aruba edge and core switches, ClearPass Policy Manager, and Aruba location-ready APs, the latter of which are designed specifically for hospitality and IoT use cases. This is particularly important for Nobu as the IT team is pairing the Aruba Bluetooth beacon and Zigbee radio technology in the APs with solutions from key IoT and analytics partners including the following:
- ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions for automating access and identity controls with door locks and enabling contactless check-in, allowing guests to use their smartphones to gain secure room access
- React Mobile to create a safe working environment for their staff with an enterprise class Employee Safety Device platform, as required by local or union regulations
- Skyfii for improving hotel operations and the visitor experience
The secure Aruba infrastructure also supports the hotel’s mobile Point-of-Sale and Property Management Systems which are critical to addressing guests’ needs, regardless of where they are located on the property. For example, guests will be able to check in or out of the property, or access concierge services without having to visit the front desk or lobby area.
As Nobu continues to add new services and applications to streamline operations and enhance its guest experience, and expand its global footprint, Linville says that the IT team will continue to rely heavily on its Aruba network infrastructure, and will evaluate additional Aruba solutions such as Aruba Central and SD-Branch.
“The Aruba infrastructure allows us to easily layer services and add applications that will deliver the customer experience our guests are seeking, as well as help our employees become more efficient,” said Linville. “The performance, reliability and built-in firewall and security features Aruba offers stood out and will make it easy for our IT team to continually upgrade and provide a superior experience for our guests and hotel teams.”
