Update: At 5:15 p.m., Front Desk Manager Onder Ucar amended the IT team’s previous theory that the Wi-Fi outage was due to a local service provider. It appears the hotel’s router lost power for roughly 25 to 30 minutes this morning. The IT team assures guests that internet service should remain stable during the remainder of the conference, Uncar said.
Guests at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown lost Wi-Fi access for roughly 45 minutes this morning between 11:30 a.m. and 12:15 p.m. Coverage has since been restored.
Around 11:30 a.m., hotel guests began to experience inconsistent internet service. Leah Rush, an ONA employee working with event support, confirmed fifteen minutes later that the outage was not limited to the _ONA23 Wi-Fi channel, but that the entire hotel had lost access.
Due to the outage, ONA attendees were unable to register or obtain printed badges. Because badges were not printing, Daniel Laplaza with Epicenter-NYC could not check-in for the conference and was left to wander the fifth floor until the Wi-Fi issue could be resolved.
“Our badges weren’t printing so we’ve just been floating around,” he said. Laplaza went to the help desk to ask for assistance and was told that Wi-Fi outages are not unusual for ONA. “They advised us that this might happen, and lo and behold, it was down.”
Guests and vendors alike were inhibited by the outage.
“We are running some product demos on iPads that require the internet, so that went down,” Daniel Higgins, an account coordinator for an agency operating in the Midway, said.
Lauren Anderson, events and membership manager for ONA, explained that some events were experiencing difficulties.
“Anything that is connected to Wi-Fi is shut down, but luckily we do have a backup for live streams so that was not affected,” she said.
Anderson was assured by hotel staff that the issue would be fixed by approximately 11:45 a.m.
Marriott Front Desk Manager Onder Ucar confirmed the outage was hotel-wide and that Marriott’s IT team was working to resolve the issue. Wi-fi was restored to the hotel at approximately 12:15 p.m.
