Luxury Hotel Introduces Premium Service Through Managed Network & Cloud Solutions

THE PEMBROKE HOTEL is an award winning 4 Star hotel in the heart of Kilkenny City and boasts 74 bedrooms, a state of the art business centre and multiple corporate meeting rooms. With the expansion of the hotel’s services to include top of the range managed offices and free wireless access throughout the hotel, the Pembroke was aware that it needed to deploy new broadband network services and to migrate some of its data to the cloud to ensure that 4 star services were delivered at all times to both corporate and leisure customers.

Through conducting a comprehensive business requirement assessment across key departments within the hotel, Business IT Solutions (BITS) identified that, in addition to issues with the existing broadband network, the hotel’s data management system, including customer databases and reservations systems, was under performing.

A complete, managed IT solution was needed that would enable the hotel to contin-ue to focus on day to day operations management while outsourcing IT Support, Net-work Support & Proactive Maintenance Services to IT experts with a proven track record of providing solutions to hospitality businesses.

THE CHALLENGE

The broadband network was somewhat disjointed and especially difficult to manage internally since the hotel had begun to expand its services. Wireless access points were located throughout the hotel but the wireless service was shared with the hotel’s administration network. This often led to issues where the system lacked band-width availability and suffered from intermittent faults with both the wireless and hotel networks.

To improve service quality and coverage, the hotel decided to deploy a new wireless network to provide internet access throughout its premises so that there would be effectively 2 separate networks in place within the hotel.

The wireless network needed to be easy to install and maintain and also needed to reduce costs so as to enable the hotel to provide complimentary broadband services to customers.

In addition, the hotel’s data (including reservation system and customer databases) was being backed up locally, operating through the local network.

THE SOLUTION

Following an in depth survey of the premises and a cloud migration compatibility study, BITS identified a number of suitable broadband network providers and cloud based solutions.

The hotel chose UPC as its primary broad-band provider and Digiweb as the backup system. BITS configured the failover setup using Lancom Firewall Routers as well as high-performance managed switches. BITS also provided Power over Ethernet (POE) wireless access points throughout the hotel. The failover system ensures that, should one provider go down, the other automatically kicks in. The system has been deployed over the existing net-work cabling infrastructure—the POE functionality eliminating any worry about power outlets. The management of the wireless network is now done via a single management console so that any problems can be easily identified from a single device.

In addition, the POE functionality and high speed broadband has allowed for the simple roll-out of IP telephones for tenants in the Business Centre. Training to staff on this system was provided so that staff on-site can now handle customer enquiries relating to the WiFi service. For data management BITS identified the need to move the backup of the local data to the cloud and introduced their online backup software to provide secure data management and storage.

IMPACT

The hotel now provides guests with the high quality complimentary broadband service befitting a leading hotel—the intermittent problems are gone and there is improved Wifi coverage.

From a commercial perspective, the system has saved money on installation and management.

The system now also provides low-cost VoIP voice communications for tenants of the Business Centre.These improvements have been introduced with absolutely no disruption to the Hotel’s provision of services to its guests and tenants.