AT&T has signed a $150 million deal with Marriott International to enable the hospitality leader to provide faster broadband speeds, Voice-over-IP (VoIP) & cloud services to its guests. Under the three-year deal, AT&T will upgrade the network architecture that will also facilitate the move of Marriott’s applications to the cloud over the next three to five years.
The deal will see AT&T delivering a new consolidated voice and data network that will also include backup and protection provided via AT&T's embedded LTE wireless backup solution. This will complement wireline connections to Marriotts' properties, protecting against service interuptions.
The deal will also see Marriot improving its Wi-Fi service, which is an important differentiator in the competitive hotelling market and at the same time, will see the hotelling giant leveraging VoIP for its contact-center applications as part of its cost reduction plan. AT&T said that the upgraded network will be monitored in a Marriott-dedicated AT&T maintenance center.
Bob Galovic, vice president, IT Networks, Marriott International
AT&T has been one of Marriott’s longest standing technology providers. We’re thrilled to continue using their network solutions to help us better run our properties. Moving our business applications to the cloud is more efficient. It will allow us to better meet the demands of our global business. It will also make it easier for our associates to work together and improve our overall guest experience. Using AT&T as our primary wireless back-up carrier will help us support the needs of our guests by making our networks and access to applications more reliable.
Frank Jules, president, Global Business Solutions, AT&T
The old ways of doing business are changing. More industry leaders, like Marriott, are using our fast and reliable network services to take their operations to the next level. We’re building our relationship with Marriott so its employees and guests will enjoy an even better experience at its North American properties.
