Case Study

Saskatoon Travelodge Goes Wireless

Located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Rooms: 268
Conference and banquet rooms: 10

The Problem
The Saskatoon Travelodge Hotel has one of the highest occupancy rates of any hotel in western Canada, accommodating thousands of business travelers each year. Located near Saskatchewan Place (the city's premier conference center for trade shows and business events), the hotel's 268 guest rooms, conference rooms and pools are always bustling with activity.

However, the Saskatoon Travelodge was only providing traditionally slow dial-up Internet access to corporate travelers. The hotel wanted to bolster customer service by offering high-speed Internet access to its guests through a simple, cost-effective solution. Installing high-speed cable throughout the hotel would have been cost prohibitive and required extensive renovations because of age and structure of the facility. The reconstruction would also have been an unacceptable disruption to guests.

The Solution
Saskatoon Travelodge deployed the 3Com® products below to create a high-speed wireless Internet connection for guests:

3Com AirConnect® 11 Mbps Wireless LAN Access Points, provide up to 11 megabits per second (Mbps) wireless Ethernet connections.

3Com® AirConnect® 11 Mbps Wireless LAN PC Cards connect guests' laptop computers to the 3Com wireless local area network (LAN).

3Com SuperStack® 3 Switch 3300 connects all 16 access points and has autosensing capabilities to adjust the speed of the attached devices.

3Com OfficeConnect™ Firewall 25 adds a business-critical layer of security.

The Benefits
The Saskatoon Travelodge Hotel implemented the 3Com wireless solution, with high-speed cable Internet access from Shaw Communications, to deliver a service that would allow business travelers to stay connected to their corporate e-mail and Internet at up to 100 times the speed of dial-up access. And guests could conduct business-critical work more efficiently and conveniently from anywhere in the facility, including hotel rooms, conference rooms, restaurant or even by the poolside. The hotel installed 16 3Com AirConnect Wireless LAN access points to offer high-speed wireless coverage anywhere in the facility. Travelodge chose 3Com because it had the capabilities of delivering a solution that would provide the much-needed connectivity that travelers require with the mobility of use that they want. The installation only took 10 days, where a cable installation would have taken months.

By using high-speed technology from Shaw and the wireless network solution from 3Com, the hotel has been transformed from a 1960s classic venue into an example of 21st century high-tech modernism.