Question: Commercial Entity(Hotel.) Aruba ap 515 vs Ubiquiti Unifi AC-Pro

We are a large hotel with over 300 rooms and 11 floors. And the HOA board wants to upgrade our network.

Company A manages our network from offsite. currently we have a handful of managed switches and have ~68 Aruba AP-104/105’s

Company A's proposed upgrade is to 1:1 swap out the APs with aruba ap 515's and update a couple switches, at a cost to us of ~ $65k installed.

Board member didn't like this and had another company(Company B) bid it out and they suggested 1:1 swap for Ubiquiti Unifi AC-Pro's at a cost of just under $20k installed.

The board just had a quarterly meeting and all but approved Company B's proposal.

I'm no expert in commercial wifi, but it seems like we are making a short sighted choice here that will severely limit our capabilities.

We are just a hotel and don't need any fancy office or business related features. But I don't like what I'm reading about these AP's not handling the large number of concurrent connections we are used to seeing.

For more info: we don't use a splash page or a password at all for guests to connect.

It is wide open free wifi for anyone within proximity of the hotel.

We are also a ski hotel at the base of the lift literally on the mountain. So anyone at all can come walk over to us and get free wifi.

That being said, our devices closest to those areas get absolutely hammered and maxxed out on connections.

What do you foresee our biggest challenge being if we go with Company B?

I don't see any kind of service contract in the bid either. I would have to follow up on this, but I think we are dumping Company A after Company B does the equipment swap.

As someone who is basically a savvy power user with some college comp sci experience and some relatively basic IT-on-the-side experience, would I be able to handle the management of this new system with some extensive research?

I'm the only one on staff that knows a damn about technology and I am always the point of contact for our low voltage vendors and contractors, except in the instance where random board member had company B make this bid sight unseen.