Call upgrade

A three-year renovation resulted in a new lobby and improved cellular reception at The Peabody Hotel Orlando.

The Peabody Hotel in Orlando recently finished a large-scale redesign that added an additional 250,000 square feet of meeting space, three additional restaurants, a new parking structure, a lounge and 750 new guestrooms. On top of all of this, the hotel also is experiencing a technological overhaul. Its most recently completed project was the long-awaited upgrade of cellular phone service throughout the hotel.

“A lot of the time you will find yourself with five bars of reception and [you will] drop a call,” said The Peabody’s IT director Brian Seays. “This is when you are at a large conference, so when we upgraded we had to get decent coverage that can cover up to 50,000 other people.”

AT&T was chosen as the primary carrier for The Peabody’s service, but the service has been designed in such a way that carriers are easy to drop or add, allowing for all carriers to be supported at the hotel.

Hotel management first considered improving cellular reception during the renovation. The Peabody faced challenges that were not unique from other locations in the area: Massive buildings on either side of the hotel coupled with older construction stifled reception and often forced guests to leave the building in order to make a phone call. This became an issue during large conferences, when large numbers of guests would surge outside all at once during breaks.

The improvement to cellular reception was planned to increase overall guest comfort. To achieve this, the hotel had to outfit its cellular reception for as many carriers as possible, and additional towers were installed in order to deliver reception through the hotel’s thick walls.

“We worked with Corning, AT&T, Verizon and others to deploy in-building wiring to extend the coverage that was outside of the building to the inside,” Seays said. “We had to get the building to communicate.”

Seays recalled the groups of meeting attendees who would rush out the front doors after a conference in order to attempt a call. With the new system in place, they no longer have to.

“If you are having issues with reception you often ask yourself if it’s your phone or your service, but not normally the building,” he said. “But we saw this as an issue we could solve with a new system.

“We saw the condition of cellular reception as poor in both our hotel and other hotels in the area. I expect this sort of deployment will become the norm.”

Seays said the project is an important investment in future technology, namely the recent emphasis on 3G and 4G networks.

“We have been able to witness a 27-megabit connection rate, which is very impressive for our ownership,” he said.

Barbara Bowden, GM of The Peabody Orlando, even claims that calls can routinely be made from within the building’s elevators, a concept that would have been impossible using the building’s previous system. Bowden also said the new model of cellular deployment is much more cost-effective than previous deployments.

Seays said working with carriers and partners very closely kept the project on track. The construction for the deployment took only 45 days because it was such a priority.

Bowden said future projects could be in the works.

“We have upgraded nearly every system in the hotel,” she said. “We started the process three years ago, and we continue to have weekly update meetings regarding the changes even to this day. From a technology standpoint, we are positioned very well. We like to stay ahead of the curve, though, so if we see another advantage we will always be looking into it.”