Maintaining exceptional guest experiences in the post-cash world
The Customer
A well-established leader in British hospitality & leisure, operating numerous world-class pubs and hotels across the country.
The Challenge
With the ongoing move towards a truly cashless, interconnected society, the customer's legacy connectivity was increasingly showing its limitations, unable to handle the growing volume of card payments made on a daily basis, or guests' growing expectations around interconnected systems and amenities – all of which place considerable demands on network infrastructure.
The growing need for a new network foundation was exacerbated by the impending PSTN switch-off, which would render numerous legacy connections unavailable. As a result, the decision was made to execute a full refresh of the network, ensuring it would continue to deliver the required resilience, availability, and security across 350 sites.
A key priority was achieving sufficient capacity to accommodate the most data-intensive applications – including cashless payments, online bookings, app-based ordering, and Sky TV in all rooms. This would need to be fully consistent across all sites, in all rooms, including in proposed future sites where the incumbent provider could not provide the necessary connections. The entire project would need to be completed in advance of the PSTN switch-off, taking into account the specific regulations around the wide range of heritage sites in which the customer operated – a fundamental part of its brand identity and guest experience.
Solution
Exponential-e provided the required connections between all sites in which the customer is active, adopting an altnet vendor-agnostic approach that utilised the optimal provider for each of the customer's locations, including its own enterprise-class network. Working closely with internal teams, a comprehensive roadmap was established, with priority given to key sites in order to minimise any operational disruption and ensure the entire migration could be completed in advance of the PSTN switch-off.
Exponential-e's teams also worked on-location at the customer's 150 heritage sites across the country, ensuring that all work was conducted in full compliance with the applicable regulations, helping maintain the unique beauty of each building.
With this new foundation in place, the customer was able to achieve its goal of minimising the day-to-day handling of cash, resulting in more than £1m of savings through risk and labour reductions, while simultaneously providing the resilience and scalability needed to drive further service optimisations and innovations, in line with its long-term strategy of focusing on premium experiences. In the months since, the customer has enjoyed ample opportunities to scale up operations, enter new locations, and seize new opportunities to further enhance the overall guest experience.
Solution benefits
- Sustainable cost saving in excess of £1m, all of which can be reinvested in further service enhancements
- A seamless migration from legacy infrastructure to a scalable, highly available, futureproof network
- Sufficient network capacity to deliver the interconnected experiences guests expect across 350 sites, even in the most remote locations
- An altnet vendor-agnostic approach, delivering the optimal connections to each site, regardless of location
- Network upgrades executed in 150 heritage sites, maintaining their beauty in line with all applicable regulations
- Minimised handling of cash in daily operations, reducing risk and labour costs
- Ample scope to implement further improvements to the guest experience, such as digital signage, app-based access to amenities, and smart-tech equipped rooms
We benefit very highly of the network redundancy we have in place with Exponential-e, it allows our business to remain connected so that all of our managed pubs and hotels can trade and take payments
Server & Network Supervisor
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