240 Guest-Room Access Points Refreshed Across 2 Towers, Floor-by-Floor, Zero Rooms Lost to Inventory.
At a Glance
| Operator | Full-service hotel, downtown Chicago |
| Scope | UniFi guest-network refresh; 240 APs, 2 towers, head-end consolidation |
| Constraint | No rooms taken out of inventory at any point |
| Timeline | 6 weeks, floor-by-floor in shoulder season |
| Outcome | Single Nexus360 managed contract replaced 3 prior vendor relationships |
The Problem
This downtown Chicago hotel was running three Wi-Fi vendors simultaneously — one for the guest network in Tower 1, a second for Tower 2 (legacy from an ownership change), and a third for back-of-house. Each vendor had its own support contract, its own head-end, and its own ticket queue. When a guest complained about Wi-Fi, the front desk didn't know which vendor to call. The Director of Engineering carried a pager because the overnight call-routing was too complicated to explain to anyone else.
Guest satisfaction scores on in-room technology had been declining for 18 months. The GMs had flagged it to ownership. Ownership wanted a single vendor, a single bill, and a number they could call at 2 a.m. that would actually get someone on the phone. The existing APs were also 7–9 years old — past the point where a software upgrade would resolve the dead-zone and throughput issues on the upper floors.
The constraint that shaped everything: the hotel could not take rooms out of inventory. Revenue management had blocked out a 6-week shoulder-season window, but "block out rooms" was not on the table. The install had to happen floor-by-floor, room-by-room, with the guest in the adjacent room unaware anything was happening.
What We Did
01 — Discover
RF walk of both towers, documenting existing AP locations, current channel plans, interference sources, and the back-of-house topology. We identified a conduit path from the existing IDF closets that allowed the new cabling to be run without opening ceilings in occupied corridors — a detail that cut the schedule by 10 days.
02 — Design
UniFi floor plan design with 240 APs across both towers, head-end consolidation to a single UniFi Dream Machine Pro per building, and a back-of-house SSID on the same controller. Cabling design used the existing conduit where available; new home-runs to IDF closets where it wasn't. The design included a channel-planning document the hotel's IT team could use for ongoing management.
03 — Install
Floor-by-floor, 6 weeks. The crew started at the top floor of Tower 1, working down — 3 floors per day at peak. Each floor was completed, tested, and handed to the guest network before the crew moved down. No floor was partially live overnight. Rooms stayed in inventory throughout. The Director of Engineering walked the first floor at commissioning and cleared every subsequent floor based on the test report.
04 — Manage
At closeout, the three prior vendor contracts were cancelled. The hotel transitioned to a single Nexus360 managed service agreement: one monthly fee, proactive monitoring, firmware management, and 24/7 NOC response. The Director of Engineering still has admin access — but hasn't needed to use it for a guest complaint since the first month.
The Result
- Zero rooms taken out of inventory at any point during the 6-week install
- Front-desk Wi-Fi complaint tickets dropped from a recurring weekly issue to near-zero after go-live
- Vendor count reduced from 3 to 1 — one contract, one help-desk number
- Director of Engineering no longer carries a pager for Wi-Fi complaints
- Head-end consolidated to a single UniFi controller on Nexus360 managed service
"I haven't gotten a call from the front desk about Wi-Fi since the week we went live. That used to be a weekly thing."
— Director of Engineering, Full-Service Hotel, Chicago
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