Across the Hospitality & Leisure sector, from pubs to five-star hotels - guests' expectations have evolved in ways that would have been impossible to imagine just a decade ago.
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About Atlas Hotels
Atlas Hotels is the largest European franchise of Holiday Inn Express, operating 60 hotels across key business and leisure destinations in the UK, and one in Dresden, Germany. With over 20 years' experience in the hospitality sector, Atlas Hotels manages a diverse portfolio of 7,555 hotel rooms, providing business and leisure travellers with unparalleled service and comfort.
The Challenge
The Solution
Atlas' guests expect the highest quality internet connectivity in their rooms, particularly business travellers who depend on access to critical online services. This placed considerable demands on the resilience of their network and the available bandwidth, with little consistency in the available speeds at different sites.
At the same time, as Atlas' continued its expansion into new locations, seamless cross-site communication and collaboration between staff had become an essential part of its day-to-day operations. However, the Property Management System (PMS) still utilised on-site legacy servers, which increasingly limited the performance and availability of this critical platform, leading to multiple challenges around resource management and operational efficiency.
Atlas Hotels therefore sought to consolidate the disparate network solutions across its various sites under a single supplier. The aim was a unified, 'always-on' infrastructure that would provide seamless, secure, and highly available connectivity for both staff and guests, helping maintain the world-class service quality on which Atlas had built its reputation.
In addition to this foundational connectivity, the digital transformation initiative would also involve a full transition to a modern Cloud environment that would optimise the performance and availability of the PMS, while enhancing scalability and cost control as Atlas continued to expand its portfolio of sites and the range of services it offered its guests.Having a single supplier for a project of this scale is so important. The team at Exponential-e weren't just on hand throughout each phase, ensuring we were able to hit our targets on time and to budget, but they have always been just a call away if we have any concerns. They have also offered invaluable input into ways we can further optimise our guest experience and broaden our range of services.
Ben Otton, IT Manager, Atlas Hotel
Once the project specifications had been defined and agreed upon, Exponential-e worked closely with Atlas Hotels' IT teams at both the head office and various hotel locations across the UK, under the direction of a dedicated Exponential-e project manager, ensuring that their specific needs were met at every stage of the implementation.
The first phase of the project focused on the deployment of highly resilient, 1Gb connectivity across all 60 Atlas Hotels locations, leveraging Exponential-e's own enterprise-class network to ensure consistent quality and availability for all guests and staff, with built-in redundancy to ensure 24/7 availability and minimal downtime. This resulted in double the available internet speeds at multiple sites, particularly those still reliant on legacy connectivity.
The second phase focused on migrating the legacy on-site infrastructure to a secure, highly available private Cloud, configured with end-to-end encryption and advanced firewall protection to guarantee the integrity of guests' data. By moving virtualised servers and workloads into this new environment, the resulting improvements in performance, scalability, and the availability of critical systems – particularly the central PMS – allowed for more efficient resource management, freeing staff to focus on the guest experience.
The entire migration process was completed in six months, with minimal disruption to Atlas' day-to-day operations. For additional levels of resilience, a robust disaster recovery plan was put in place, ensuring business continuity would always be maintained in the event of a system failure or data loss.
The partnership between Exponential-e and Atlas Hotels continues to evolve, with plans already in place to further enhance the guest experience through the application of new technologies. This includes implementing the next generation of interconnected meeting and event spaces at all 60 sites, incorporating advanced AV systems, platforms for simplified booking, and high-performance video conferencing.
With this successful transformation, Atlas Hotels now has a robust, high-performance, and secure digital foundation in place, which will support their ongoing growth and operational excellence. As more locations are added to the Atlas portfolio, Exponential-e will continue to expand and optimise the network infrastructure, ensuring all guests and staff continue to enjoy the highest quality connectivity and new opportunities for improvement can be identified and acted upon.
Solution Benefits
- Highly resilient 1Gb connectivity available for staff and guests at all 60 Atlas sites across the UK and beyond, encompassing 7,555 hotel rooms
- Improved communication and collaboration between dispersed staff, with optimal performance and availability for the central PMS
- A seamless migration to a highly secure private Cloud environment, with in-built redundancy and robust disaster recovery systems minimising the risk of downtime
- Effortless scalability and potential for future upgrades, supporting Atlas Hotels' ongoing growth and the adoption of emerging technologies
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Like many longstanding institutions, Britain's world-renowned pubs are undergoing their own digital transformation journey, utilising leading-edge technologies to offer truly personalised experiences to patrons of all ages and backgrounds - from longstanding regulars visiting for their usual pint, to families looking for a meal, and young professionals working on the go. It's an exciting time for the sector as a whole, but at the same time, the drive for modernisation must not come at the expense of patrons' safety and enjoyment.
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The Hospitality & Leisure sector is inherently people-focused, with the personal touch making all the difference to guests' experiences. But, as we have already discussed on this blog, the multiple lockdowns in response to COVID-19 have forced to the entire sector to adopt new ways of engaging with guests, utilising next-gen smart technology to deliver truly bespoke experiences and streamlined access to a wide range of services.
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Technology in the Hospitality Industry - Maintaining the Human Touch in the Age of Social Distancing
2020 has proven a challenging time for the global hospitality sector. As with virtually every industry impacted by COVID-19, the sector has been forced to completely re-evaluate the way it delivers its services, in order to comply with government regulations and - most importantly - guarantee the continued safety of both guests and staff.
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There's no doubt that the past two years have challenged the Hospitality & Leisure sectors in ways that would previously have been unimaginable, with social distancing requirements limiting the number of guests who can be hosted and making familiar processes like checking in and out significantly more complex. But, like every sector impacted by the pandemic, these challenges have inspired a new wave on innovation, as IT infrastructure has evolved to support staff and guests alike, ensuring safety does not have to come at the expense of an enjoyable stay.
Let's consider some of the ways the challenges of COVID-19 have impacted the Hospitality & Leisure sector, and how the lessons learned can - in the long term - open up new opportunities to deliver truly unforgettable experiences for every guest…
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With lockdown restrictions finally easing, and the public looking forward to enjoying the different activities they have been deprived of for the past two years, it's certainly an exciting time for the UK's Hospitality & Leisure sector. But as hotels get ready to open their doors again, it is essential that hospitality professionals do not lose sight of the challenges that will be involved.
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Like many fixtures of our lives, Britain's pubs were heavily impacted by COVID-19, with their familiar patrons unable to come in for a post-work drink, or meet with friends at the weekend. But while it was undoubtedly a difficult period for the industry as a whole, this great British institution did as it has always done, and adapted to suit its patrons' evolving requirements.
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