Nobu Hospitality—a lifestyle brand founded by Nobu Matsuhisa, Robert De Niro and Meir Teper—is standardizing on Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company, as its preferred network infrastructure vendor for three of its new hotels, which are located in Chicago; Warsaw, Poland; and London's Portman Square.
The hotels will use the foundation of Aruba ESP—a combination of Aruba wired, wireless and security solutions—to maintain secure Wi-Fi and roll out a range of Internet of Things applications.
“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 Rodney Linville, global corporate director of IT for Nobu Hospitality. “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.”
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 because 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 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, Linville says that the IT team will evaluate additional Aruba solutions.